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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,907 4,065 5,194
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.44% 14.98% 14.16%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.20% 40.10% 43.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,866 2,832 3,804
10th Percentile £368 £350 £350
25th Percentile £437 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 158 32 49
10th Percentile £20.20 £25.10 £17.80
25th Percentile £37.25 £27.24 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% -6.40% -22.90%
75th Percentile £80.94 £76.56 £61.60
90th Percentile £101.34 £100.00 £66.54
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +7.48% +15.85% -22.90%

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 15,626 10,136 12,064
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.93% 37.36% 32.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,489 6,852 8,592
10th Percentile £325 £311 £311
25th Percentile £419 £409 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £516 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.20% -4.76% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 559 266 324
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.06% +14.32% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £41.84 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.30
% change year-on-year +34.55% +23.32% -36.29%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 3,618 £550 - 1,182
North of England +7 1,009 £500 +2.30% 849
South East +2 856 £525 +5.00% 955
Midlands +2 616 £500 - 467
North West +8 533 £500 - 446
West Midlands +2 460 £500 -4.76% 248
South West +7 440 £539 +7.75% 430
Yorkshire +1 397 £500 +5.26% 287
East of England +2 187 £550 - 347
East Midlands +4 145 £488 +5.41% 217
North East +4 92 £525 +5.00% 124
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
1 353 (5.11%) SharePoint
2 227 (3.29%) Confluence
3 172 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 165 (2.39%) Apache Spark
5 118 (1.71%) Apache Airflow
6 106 (1.53%) Apache
7 37 (0.54%) SAS
8 26 (0.38%) IIS
9 19 (0.28%) CMS
10 15 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.14%) Camunda
13 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.12%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.087%) Appian
15 6 (0.087%) Documentum
15 6 (0.087%) Mendix
16 5 (0.072%) Tomcat
Applications
1 105 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 66 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
3 64 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
4 33 (0.48%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.39%) Chatbot
6 26 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.12%) Revit
11 5 (0.072%) Trello
12 4 (0.058%) Notion
13 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.043%) PTC Creo
14 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
15 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 1 (0.014%) Houdini
15 1 (0.014%) InDesign
15 1 (0.014%) NUKE
15 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 100 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 72 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.19%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.12%) Maximo
5 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.10%) Magento
6 7 (0.10%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.10%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.087%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.087%) Shopify
8 5 (0.072%) Endur
8 5 (0.072%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.072%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.072%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.058%) Remedy AR System
9 4 (0.058%) Ripple
9 4 (0.058%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,442 (35.36%) AWS
2 1,421 (20.57%) Azure DevOps
3 1,153 (16.69%) GCP
4 895 (12.96%) Entra ID
5 876 (12.68%) Power Platform
6 698 (10.11%) Microsoft 365
7 635 (9.19%) GitHub
8 418 (6.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 378 (5.47%) GitHub Actions
10 311 (4.50%) Serverless
11 285 (4.13%) SaaS
12 278 (4.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 242 (3.50%) Azure AKS
14 238 (3.45%) Power Automate
15 230 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
16 222 (3.21%) PaaS
17 219 (3.17%) Dynamics 365
18 207 (3.00%) PowerApps
19 198 (2.87%) Snowflake
20 192 (2.78%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 444 (6.43%) Firewall
2 332 (4.81%) DNS
3 270 (3.91%) VPN
4 233 (3.37%) Network Security
5 182 (2.64%) WAN
6 171 (2.48%) DHCP
7 130 (1.88%) TCP/IP
8 119 (1.72%) LAN
9 109 (1.58%) BGP
10 92 (1.33%) SD-WAN
11 87 (1.26%) OSPF
12 79 (1.14%) VLAN
13 71 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.83%) SSL
15 54 (0.78%) SAN
16 52 (0.75%) Kerberos
17 48 (0.69%) Wireless
18 46 (0.67%) IPsec
19 41 (0.59%) VXLAN
20 38 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 612 (8.86%) Power BI
2 418 (6.05%) SQL Server
3 347 (5.02%) Data Warehouse
4 299 (4.33%) Data Lake
5 253 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
6 174 (2.52%) Azure SQL Database
6 174 (2.52%) NoSQL
7 163 (2.36%) Metadata
8 123 (1.78%) Delta Lake
9 117 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 95 (1.38%) Big Data
11 81 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 72 (1.04%) MongoDB
13 70 (1.01%) Tableau
14 63 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.83%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.78%) MySQL
16 54 (0.78%) Oracle Database
17 48 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
18 47 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 516 (7.47%) JIRA
2 511 (7.40%) Git
3 326 (4.72%) Jenkins
4 244 (3.53%) GitLab
5 103 (1.49%) Selenium
6 58 (0.84%) JUnit
7 55 (0.80%) Postman
8 53 (0.77%) JMeter
9 48 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 42 (0.61%) SonarQube
11 40 (0.58%) REST Assured
12 38 (0.55%) Cypress.io
13 37 (0.54%) WebDriver
14 36 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 35 (0.51%) Maven
15 35 (0.51%) MLflow
16 28 (0.41%) Gradle
17 26 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
18 23 (0.33%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 1,744 (25.25%) Social Skills
2 1,351 (19.56%) Finance
3 730 (10.57%) Public Sector
4 679 (9.83%) Analytical Skills
5 393 (5.69%) Banking
6 198 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 164 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 162 (2.35%) Retail
9 158 (2.29%) Legal
10 92 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
11 77 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
12 69 (1.00%) Law
13 67 (0.97%) Telecoms
14 65 (0.94%) Investment Banking
15 64 (0.93%) Financial Institution
15 64 (0.93%) Front Office
16 63 (0.91%) Marketing
17 62 (0.90%) Manufacturing
18 53 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
19 47 (0.68%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,223 (17.71%) Architect
2 858 (12.42%) Senior
3 839 (12.15%) Developer
4 599 (8.67%) Azure Engineer
5 552 (7.99%) Lead
6 530 (7.67%) Data Engineer
7 429 (6.21%) Analyst
8 366 (5.30%) Solutions Architect
9 333 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
10 282 (4.08%) Cloud Engineer
11 281 (4.07%) Consultant
12 250 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 197 (2.85%) Data Architect
14 178 (2.58%) Azure Architect
15 173 (2.50%) Platform Engineer
16 170 (2.46%) Security Engineer
17 163 (2.36%) Technical Architect
18 160 (2.32%) Business Analyst
19 155 (2.24%) Project Manager
20 149 (2.16%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 524 (7.59%) .NET
2 466 (6.75%) REST
3 270 (3.91%) Kafka
4 266 (3.85%) React
5 220 (3.19%) RESTful
6 215 (3.11%) PySpark
7 209 (3.03%) OAuth
8 176 (2.55%) Spring
9 164 (2.37%) Node.js
10 156 (2.26%) AngularJS
11 151 (2.19%) JSON
12 145 (2.10%) Spring Boot
13 136 (1.97%) SAML
14 123 (1.78%) LDAP
14 123 (1.78%) OpenID
15 121 (1.75%) HTML
16 118 (1.71%) .NET Framework
17 113 (1.64%) Middleware
18 112 (1.62%) SOAP
19 109 (1.58%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 740 (10.71%) Cloud Native
2 308 (4.46%) Onboarding
3 270 (3.91%) Product Ownership
4 223 (3.23%) Data Centre
4 223 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
5 209 (3.03%) Hybrid Cloud
6 205 (2.97%) Legacy Systems
7 171 (2.48%) AI Agents
8 146 (2.11%) Security Posture
9 145 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
10 126 (1.82%) Public Cloud
11 108 (1.56%) Data Structures
12 97 (1.40%) Management Information System
13 93 (1.35%) Replication
14 91 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
15 79 (1.14%) Enterprise Cloud
15 79 (1.14%) PKI
16 73 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
17 67 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
18 59 (0.85%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 817 (11.83%) Windows
2 363 (5.26%) Linux
3 258 (3.74%) Windows Server
4 105 (1.52%) Windows 10
5 70 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 70 (1.01%) Unix
6 62 (0.90%) Mac OS
7 60 (0.87%) Android
8 59 (0.85%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.64%) VMS
10 38 (0.55%) Ubuntu
11 23 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.16%) CentOS
15 9 (0.13%) Debian
16 6 (0.087%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.087%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.072%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,530 (36.63%) DevOps
2 2,120 (30.69%) CI/CD
3 1,699 (24.60%) Agile
4 1,091 (15.80%) AI
5 1,038 (15.03%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,014 (14.68%) Migration
7 997 (14.43%) Analytics
8 937 (13.57%) Problem-Solving
9 884 (12.80%) Stakeholder Management
10 783 (11.34%) Data Modelling
11 715 (10.35%) Continuous Improvement
12 684 (9.90%) Data Pipeline
13 676 (9.79%) Roadmaps
14 657 (9.51%) Business Intelligence
15 620 (8.98%) Containerisation
16 605 (8.76%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 604 (8.74%) Microservices
18 599 (8.67%) ETL
19 571 (8.27%) Data Engineering
20 537 (7.77%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,627 (23.56%) Python
2 1,401 (20.28%) SQL
3 709 (10.26%) PowerShell
4 575 (8.32%) Java
5 528 (7.64%) C#
6 377 (5.46%) JavaScript
7 274 (3.97%) Bash
8 246 (3.56%) TypeScript
9 231 (3.34%) Bicep
10 88 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.16%) T-SQL
12 73 (1.06%) Go
13 61 (0.88%) Scala
14 48 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
15 38 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 35 (0.51%) R
17 32 (0.46%) Kotlin
18 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
19 24 (0.35%) Groovy
20 21 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,716 (24.84%) Security Cleared
2 1,407 (20.37%) SC Cleared
3 505 (7.31%) Degree
4 374 (5.41%) Azure Certification
5 217 (3.14%) CISSP
6 215 (3.11%) DV Cleared
7 183 (2.65%) Microsoft Certification
8 175 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
9 173 (2.50%) AWS Certification
10 172 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
11 147 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
12 103 (1.49%) CISM
13 83 (1.20%) CCNP
14 70 (1.01%) PMP
15 66 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 63 (0.91%) PMI Certification
17 54 (0.78%) Master's Degree
18 51 (0.74%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 479 (6.93%) Data Quality
2 360 (5.21%) QA
3 293 (4.24%) GDPR
4 242 (3.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 240 (3.47%) NIST
6 153 (2.22%) Accessibility
7 95 (1.38%) NCSC
8 89 (1.29%) SLA
9 67 (0.97%) PCI DSS
10 65 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.90%) WCAG
12 61 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 58 (0.84%) GRC
14 44 (0.64%) PMO
15 33 (0.48%) HIPAA
16 29 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.35%) NIST 800
18 21 (0.30%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.25%) ISO 20022
20 16 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 863 (12.49%) Active Directory
2 723 (10.47%) Docker
3 191 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 132 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 126 (1.82%) Virtual Machines
6 89 (1.29%) Hyper-V
7 60 (0.87%) vSphere
8 52 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.42%) Firmware
11 22 (0.32%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) IAG
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.087%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.072%) RACF
17 5 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.058%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,111 (16.09%) Terraform
2 979 (14.17%) Kubernetes
3 376 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 335 (4.85%) Ansible
5 204 (2.95%) Grafana
6 170 (2.46%) Prometheus
7 146 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
8 95 (1.38%) SCCM
9 64 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 49 (0.71%) Progress Chef
11 44 (0.64%) Puppet
12 43 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
13 40 (0.58%) Argo
14 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 27 (0.39%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.28%) HAProxy
18 18 (0.26%) Packer
19 16 (0.23%) HP ALM
20 15 (0.22%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,270 (32.87%) Microsoft
2 626 (9.06%) Databricks
3 342 (4.95%) ServiceNow
4 277 (4.01%) Oracle
5 269 (3.89%) VMware
6 259 (3.75%) Google
7 200 (2.90%) SAP
8 190 (2.75%) Cisco
9 170 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 153 (2.22%) Splunk
11 132 (1.91%) Salesforce
12 128 (1.85%) CyberArk
12 128 (1.85%) Palo Alto
13 120 (1.74%) Foundry
14 88 (1.27%) Dynatrace
15 84 (1.22%) Okta
16 82 (1.19%) Zscaler
17 68 (0.98%) Informatica
18 64 (0.93%) Citrix
18 64 (0.93%) Fortinet