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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,067 4,083 4,922
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.59% 14.84% 14.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.55% 39.79% 43.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,956 2,838 3,602
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £437 £420 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 33 32
10th Percentile £19.50 £20.30 £17.84
25th Percentile £31.25 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -39.13%
75th Percentile £79.75 £76.25 £58.00
90th Percentile £100.76 £100.00 £74.47
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £35.00
% change year-on-year +33.02% +23.50% -39.13%

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 15,864 10,262 11,377
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.00% 37.29% 33.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,589 6,956 8,088
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £423 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £718 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £519 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 567 267 250
10th Percentile £16.62 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.24 £26.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.23% +18.18% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £51.43
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £27.50 £23.15
% change year-on-year +29.09% +18.79% -33.86%

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 31 July 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 31 July 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 31 July 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 3,707 £550 - 1,433
North of England +8 1,023 £500 +5.26% 596
South East +2 897 £525 +5.00% 669
Midlands +4 639 £495 -0.50% 296
North West +7 535 £500 +2.83% 332
West Midlands +2 484 £493 -6.19% 187
South West +6 440 £539 +7.75% 252
Yorkshire +5 408 £500 +5.26% 187
East of England +3 180 £535 -2.73% 153
East Midlands +8 143 £488 +5.41% 109
North East +1 94 £516 +5.90% 90
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
1 376 (5.32%) SharePoint
2 241 (3.41%) Confluence
3 180 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 161 (2.28%) Apache Spark
5 126 (1.78%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.54%) Apache
7 39 (0.55%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 15 (0.21%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.099%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.099%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.085%) Camunda
16 6 (0.085%) Documentum
16 6 (0.085%) Jupyter
16 6 (0.085%) Mendix
Applications
1 106 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 66 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
4 31 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.41%) Chatbot
6 26 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
8 10 (0.14%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
11 4 (0.057%) Notion
12 3 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.014%) InDesign
14 1 (0.014%) PTC Creo
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 100 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Maximo
5 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
5 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.099%) Shopify
7 6 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.071%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.057%) Endur
9 4 (0.057%) Quorum
9 4 (0.057%) Ripple
9 4 (0.057%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.057%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,505 (35.45%) AWS
2 1,477 (20.90%) Azure DevOps
3 1,202 (17.01%) GCP
4 913 (12.92%) Entra ID
5 886 (12.54%) Power Platform
6 710 (10.05%) Microsoft 365
7 668 (9.45%) GitHub
8 430 (6.08%) Azure Data Factory
9 404 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
10 308 (4.36%) Serverless
11 296 (4.19%) SaaS
12 286 (4.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 257 (3.64%) Azure AKS
14 249 (3.52%) Power Automate
15 248 (3.51%) Azure Monitor
16 230 (3.25%) Dynamics 365
17 228 (3.23%) PaaS
18 225 (3.18%) PowerApps
19 213 (3.01%) Snowflake
20 195 (2.76%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 474 (6.71%) Firewall
2 346 (4.90%) DNS
3 289 (4.09%) VPN
4 258 (3.65%) Network Security
5 186 (2.63%) WAN
6 179 (2.53%) DHCP
7 154 (2.18%) TCP/IP
8 116 (1.64%) LAN
9 111 (1.57%) BGP
10 91 (1.29%) OSPF
10 91 (1.29%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.25%) VLAN
12 72 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
13 62 (0.88%) SSL
14 56 (0.79%) SAN
15 53 (0.75%) Wireless
16 45 (0.64%) IPsec
16 45 (0.64%) VXLAN
17 39 (0.55%) Internet
18 38 (0.54%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 633 (8.96%) Power BI
2 420 (5.94%) SQL Server
3 365 (5.16%) Data Warehouse
4 309 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 254 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
6 186 (2.63%) NoSQL
7 178 (2.52%) Metadata
8 175 (2.48%) Azure SQL Database
9 124 (1.75%) Delta Lake
10 115 (1.63%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.26%) Big Data
12 85 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 72 (1.02%) MongoDB
14 65 (0.92%) Tableau
15 62 (0.88%) MySQL
16 60 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
17 57 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 52 (0.74%) Oracle Database
19 51 (0.72%) Star Schema
20 50 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 536 (7.58%) Git
2 527 (7.46%) JIRA
3 352 (4.98%) Jenkins
4 272 (3.85%) GitLab
5 103 (1.46%) Selenium
6 61 (0.86%) JUnit
7 52 (0.74%) JMeter
8 50 (0.71%) Cucumber
8 50 (0.71%) Postman
9 47 (0.67%) SonarQube
10 45 (0.64%) Cypress.io
11 40 (0.57%) Maven
12 38 (0.54%) WebDriver
13 36 (0.51%) REST Assured
14 35 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 34 (0.48%) MLflow
16 29 (0.41%) Gradle
17 28 (0.40%) Bitbucket
18 26 (0.37%) Gatling
19 24 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,788 (25.30%) Social Skills
2 1,392 (19.70%) Finance
3 770 (10.90%) Public Sector
4 693 (9.81%) Analytical Skills
5 399 (5.65%) Banking
6 193 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
7 177 (2.50%) Retail
8 176 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 152 (2.15%) Legal
10 88 (1.25%) Organisational Skills
11 83 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 78 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
13 71 (1.00%) Law
13 71 (1.00%) Manufacturing
14 66 (0.93%) Financial Institution
14 66 (0.93%) Marketing
15 65 (0.92%) Investment Banking
16 63 (0.89%) Front Office
17 56 (0.79%) Military
18 55 (0.78%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,257 (17.79%) Architect
2 901 (12.75%) Senior
3 845 (11.96%) Developer
4 619 (8.76%) Azure Engineer
5 586 (8.29%) Lead
6 546 (7.73%) Data Engineer
7 427 (6.04%) Analyst
8 389 (5.50%) Solutions Architect
9 330 (4.67%) DevOps Engineer
10 309 (4.37%) Cloud Engineer
11 273 (3.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 272 (3.85%) Consultant
13 212 (3.00%) Data Architect
14 189 (2.67%) Platform Engineer
15 176 (2.49%) Security Engineer
16 173 (2.45%) Azure Architect
17 162 (2.29%) Project Manager
18 158 (2.24%) Business Analyst
18 158 (2.24%) Technical Architect
19 156 (2.21%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 536 (7.58%) .NET
2 490 (6.93%) REST
3 275 (3.89%) Kafka
4 269 (3.81%) React
5 226 (3.20%) PySpark
5 226 (3.20%) RESTful
6 213 (3.01%) OAuth
7 165 (2.33%) Spring
8 163 (2.31%) JSON
9 160 (2.26%) Node.js
10 154 (2.18%) AngularJS
11 138 (1.95%) SAML
12 133 (1.88%) OpenID
13 131 (1.85%) Spring Boot
14 125 (1.77%) .NET Framework
15 121 (1.71%) HTML
16 119 (1.68%) OAuth2
17 115 (1.63%) Middleware
18 113 (1.60%) SOAP
19 99 (1.40%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 759 (10.74%) Cloud Native
2 341 (4.83%) Onboarding
3 290 (4.10%) Product Ownership
4 235 (3.33%) Distributed Systems
5 227 (3.21%) Data Centre
6 226 (3.20%) Hybrid Cloud
7 204 (2.89%) AI Agents
7 204 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
8 164 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
9 155 (2.19%) Security Posture
10 128 (1.81%) Data Structures
11 122 (1.73%) Public Cloud
12 114 (1.61%) Management Information System
13 94 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
14 91 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
15 90 (1.27%) PKI
16 75 (1.06%) Replication
16 75 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
17 67 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
18 59 (0.83%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 840 (11.89%) Windows
2 402 (5.69%) Linux
3 279 (3.95%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.56%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 75 (1.06%) Unix
6 67 (0.95%) Android
7 65 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.83%) Apple iOS
9 45 (0.64%) Ubuntu
9 45 (0.64%) VMS
10 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
11 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
11 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
12 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 11 (0.16%) CentOS
14 9 (0.13%) Debian
15 6 (0.085%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.071%) Amazon Linux
16 5 (0.071%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,572 (36.39%) DevOps
2 2,178 (30.82%) CI/CD
3 1,772 (25.07%) Agile
4 1,143 (16.17%) AI
5 1,093 (15.47%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,034 (14.63%) Migration
7 1,026 (14.52%) Analytics
8 1,007 (14.25%) Stakeholder Management
9 938 (13.27%) Problem-Solving
10 806 (11.41%) Data Modelling
11 770 (10.90%) Continuous Improvement
12 703 (9.95%) Data Pipeline
13 683 (9.66%) Business Intelligence
14 676 (9.57%) Roadmaps
15 670 (9.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 631 (8.93%) Containerisation
17 603 (8.53%) Microservices
18 602 (8.52%) ETL
19 594 (8.41%) Data Engineering
20 565 (7.99%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,657 (23.45%) Python
2 1,411 (19.97%) SQL
3 731 (10.34%) PowerShell
4 580 (8.21%) Java
5 532 (7.53%) C#
6 408 (5.77%) JavaScript
7 320 (4.53%) Bash
8 272 (3.85%) Bicep
9 249 (3.52%) TypeScript
10 91 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 81 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.91%) Go
13 50 (0.71%) Scala
14 46 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
15 41 (0.58%) Shell Script
16 36 (0.51%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.48%) R
18 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
19 28 (0.40%) Groovy
20 26 (0.37%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,783 (25.23%) Security Cleared
2 1,444 (20.43%) SC Cleared
3 520 (7.36%) Degree
4 384 (5.43%) Azure Certification
5 237 (3.35%) DV Cleared
6 222 (3.14%) CISSP
7 196 (2.77%) Microsoft Certification
8 185 (2.62%) Cisco Certification
9 177 (2.50%) AWS Certification
10 169 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
11 154 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
12 105 (1.49%) CISM
13 91 (1.29%) CCNP
14 72 (1.02%) PMP
15 69 (0.98%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 52 (0.74%) Master's Degree
18 49 (0.69%) ISTQB
19 45 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
20 44 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 498 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 374 (5.29%) QA
3 280 (3.96%) GDPR
4 251 (3.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 251 (3.55%) NIST
5 166 (2.35%) Accessibility
6 96 (1.36%) SLA
7 93 (1.32%) NCSC
8 69 (0.98%) GRC
9 68 (0.96%) PCI DSS
9 68 (0.96%) WCAG
10 66 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
11 53 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 50 (0.71%) PMO
13 29 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 28 (0.40%) HIPAA
15 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
16 22 (0.31%) NIST 800
17 15 (0.21%) COBIT
17 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 869 (12.30%) Active Directory
2 757 (10.71%) Docker
3 190 (2.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 132 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
4 132 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
5 93 (1.32%) Hyper-V
6 61 (0.86%) vSphere
7 50 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
8 35 (0.50%) VMware NSX
9 29 (0.41%) Firmware
10 23 (0.33%) NFS
11 16 (0.23%) Postfix
12 13 (0.18%) IAG
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.099%) Varnish
15 6 (0.085%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.071%) BitLocker
16 5 (0.071%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.057%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,160 (16.41%) Terraform
2 1,029 (14.56%) Kubernetes
3 384 (5.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 363 (5.14%) Ansible
5 217 (3.07%) Grafana
6 179 (2.53%) Prometheus
7 128 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
8 102 (1.44%) SCCM
9 52 (0.74%) Progress Chef
10 50 (0.71%) Argo
11 44 (0.62%) Puppet
12 40 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 32 (0.45%) FortiGate
15 27 (0.38%) Istio
16 20 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) Packer
18 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
19 16 (0.23%) SCOM
20 13 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,349 (33.24%) Microsoft
2 659 (9.33%) Databricks
3 362 (5.12%) ServiceNow
4 280 (3.96%) VMware
5 277 (3.92%) Google
6 276 (3.91%) Oracle
7 216 (3.06%) Cisco
8 196 (2.77%) SAP
9 167 (2.36%) OpenAI
10 159 (2.25%) Splunk
11 143 (2.02%) Palo Alto
12 136 (1.92%) CyberArk
13 131 (1.85%) Salesforce
14 118 (1.67%) Foundry
15 102 (1.44%) Dynatrace
16 91 (1.29%) Zscaler
17 70 (0.99%) Okta
18 68 (0.96%) Fortinet
18 68 (0.96%) Informatica
19 64 (0.91%) Red Hat