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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,181 4,047 4,828
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.69% 14.66% 14.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.76% 39.42% 42.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,023 2,799 3,520
10th Percentile £373 £350 £350
25th Percentile £437 £421 £450
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 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 166 35 32
10th Percentile £19.50 £21.72 £17.84
25th Percentile £25.81 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -34.88%
75th Percentile £78.94 £76.88 £54.13
90th Percentile £100.42 £100.00 £74.47
UK median hourly rate £53.75 £43.23 £35.00
% change year-on-year +24.35% +23.50% -37.78%

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 16,045 10,267 11,244
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.05% 37.19% 33.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,703 6,965 7,967
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £421 £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 £644
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 569 267 241
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £26.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +36.54% +9.24% -29.79%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £53.00
90th Percentile £83.64 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £27.63 £24.17
% change year-on-year +26.67% +14.34% -30.96%

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 8 August 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 8 August 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 8 August 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 3,766 £550 - 2,065
North of England +8 1,028 £500 +5.26% 763
South East +1 919 £525 +5.00% 800
Midlands +4 659 £493 -1.50% 373
North West +7 542 £500 +4.17% 431
West Midlands +3 497 £493 -6.19% 225
South West +7 444 £540 +8.00% 397
Yorkshire +5 404 £500 +5.26% 245
East of England +3 178 £525 -4.55% 226
East Midlands +11 150 £488 +5.41% 148
North East +6 95 £513 +2.50% 99
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
1 385 (5.36%) SharePoint
2 242 (3.37%) Confluence
3 186 (2.59%) Microsoft Exchange
4 160 (2.23%) Apache Spark
5 131 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.52%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 27 (0.38%) IIS
9 16 (0.22%) CMS
10 14 (0.19%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
13 9 (0.13%) nginx
14 7 (0.097%) Camunda
14 7 (0.097%) Mendix
14 7 (0.097%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.097%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.084%) Documentum
15 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 109 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 65 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 31 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
11 5 (0.070%) Notion
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 106 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.097%) Maximo
7 7 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.097%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) Ripple
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.056%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,507 (34.91%) AWS
2 1,519 (21.15%) Azure DevOps
3 1,208 (16.82%) GCP
4 956 (13.31%) Entra ID
5 900 (12.53%) Power Platform
6 743 (10.35%) Microsoft 365
7 702 (9.78%) GitHub
8 436 (6.07%) Azure Data Factory
9 425 (5.92%) GitHub Actions
10 305 (4.25%) Serverless
11 302 (4.21%) SaaS
12 288 (4.01%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 265 (3.69%) Azure Monitor
14 259 (3.61%) Power Automate
15 255 (3.55%) Azure AKS
16 238 (3.31%) Dynamics 365
17 230 (3.20%) PowerApps
18 228 (3.18%) PaaS
19 220 (3.06%) Snowflake
20 202 (2.81%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 484 (6.74%) Firewall
2 368 (5.12%) DNS
3 301 (4.19%) VPN
4 264 (3.68%) Network Security
5 191 (2.66%) DHCP
6 182 (2.53%) WAN
7 164 (2.28%) TCP/IP
8 110 (1.53%) BGP
8 110 (1.53%) LAN
9 90 (1.25%) OSPF
9 90 (1.25%) SD-WAN
10 89 (1.24%) VLAN
11 70 (0.97%) Wi-Fi
12 61 (0.85%) SSL
13 58 (0.81%) SAN
14 53 (0.74%) Wireless
15 44 (0.61%) VXLAN
16 42 (0.58%) IPsec
17 40 (0.56%) HTTP
18 39 (0.54%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 642 (8.94%) Power BI
2 425 (5.92%) SQL Server
3 370 (5.15%) Data Warehouse
4 312 (4.34%) Data Lake
5 245 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 188 (2.62%) NoSQL
7 183 (2.55%) Metadata
8 178 (2.48%) Azure SQL Database
9 127 (1.77%) Delta Lake
10 118 (1.64%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.27%) Big Data
12 89 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 68 (0.95%) MongoDB
14 62 (0.86%) MySQL
15 61 (0.85%) Tableau
16 59 (0.82%) BigQuery
16 59 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
17 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 52 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 48 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 554 (7.71%) Git
2 530 (7.38%) JIRA
3 359 (5.00%) Jenkins
4 289 (4.02%) GitLab
5 111 (1.55%) Selenium
6 57 (0.79%) JUnit
7 54 (0.75%) Postman
8 52 (0.72%) JMeter
9 51 (0.71%) Cucumber
10 50 (0.70%) Cypress.io
11 49 (0.68%) SonarQube
12 41 (0.57%) WebDriver
13 39 (0.54%) Maven
14 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 33 (0.46%) REST Assured
16 31 (0.43%) Gradle
17 30 (0.42%) MLflow
18 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
18 28 (0.39%) Gatling
19 26 (0.36%) MSI
General
1 1,859 (25.89%) Social Skills
2 1,413 (19.68%) Finance
3 784 (10.92%) Public Sector
4 720 (10.03%) Analytical Skills
5 403 (5.61%) Banking
6 191 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
7 189 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 179 (2.49%) Retail
9 151 (2.10%) Legal
10 87 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 83 (1.16%) Telecoms
12 80 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
13 78 (1.09%) Manufacturing
14 71 (0.99%) Law
15 68 (0.95%) Aerospace
16 67 (0.93%) Financial Institution
17 66 (0.92%) Investment Banking
17 66 (0.92%) Marketing
18 61 (0.85%) Front Office
19 55 (0.77%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,288 (17.94%) Architect
2 924 (12.87%) Senior
3 841 (11.71%) Developer
4 621 (8.65%) Azure Engineer
5 594 (8.27%) Lead
6 545 (7.59%) Data Engineer
7 435 (6.06%) Analyst
8 405 (5.64%) Solutions Architect
9 336 (4.68%) DevOps Engineer
10 321 (4.47%) Cloud Engineer
11 281 (3.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 267 (3.72%) Consultant
13 216 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 193 (2.69%) Platform Engineer
15 179 (2.49%) Azure Architect
16 178 (2.48%) Security Engineer
17 171 (2.38%) Project Manager
18 158 (2.20%) Senior Developer
19 157 (2.19%) Business Analyst
19 157 (2.19%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 550 (7.66%) .NET
2 509 (7.09%) REST
3 285 (3.97%) Kafka
4 263 (3.66%) React
5 232 (3.23%) PySpark
6 229 (3.19%) RESTful
7 219 (3.05%) OAuth
8 174 (2.42%) JSON
9 152 (2.12%) Node.js
9 152 (2.12%) Spring
10 151 (2.10%) AngularJS
11 140 (1.95%) SAML
12 135 (1.88%) OpenID
13 129 (1.80%) .NET Framework
14 124 (1.73%) HTML
14 124 (1.73%) OAuth2
15 121 (1.69%) Middleware
16 118 (1.64%) Spring Boot
17 109 (1.52%) SOAP
18 103 (1.43%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 770 (10.72%) Cloud Native
2 352 (4.90%) Onboarding
3 301 (4.19%) Product Ownership
4 243 (3.38%) Hybrid Cloud
5 237 (3.30%) Distributed Systems
6 222 (3.09%) Data Centre
7 211 (2.94%) AI Agents
8 207 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
9 181 (2.52%) Enterprise Software
10 166 (2.31%) Security Posture
11 129 (1.80%) Data Structures
12 122 (1.70%) Public Cloud
13 120 (1.67%) Management Information System
14 96 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 93 (1.30%) PKI
16 91 (1.27%) Enterprise Cloud
17 79 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 76 (1.06%) Replication
19 70 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
20 67 (0.93%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 877 (12.21%) Windows
2 425 (5.92%) Linux
3 300 (4.18%) Windows Server
4 122 (1.70%) Windows 10
5 78 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 77 (1.07%) Unix
7 68 (0.95%) Android
8 65 (0.91%) Mac OS
9 61 (0.85%) Apple iOS
10 48 (0.67%) Ubuntu
11 45 (0.63%) VMS
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) CentOS
16 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 10 (0.14%) Debian
17 6 (0.084%) AIX
18 5 (0.070%) Amazon Linux
18 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,623 (36.53%) DevOps
2 2,212 (30.80%) CI/CD
3 1,785 (24.86%) Agile
4 1,160 (16.15%) AI
5 1,126 (15.68%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,054 (14.68%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,053 (14.66%) Analytics
7 1,053 (14.66%) Migration
8 968 (13.48%) Problem-Solving
9 818 (11.39%) Data Modelling
10 793 (11.04%) Continuous Improvement
11 712 (9.92%) Data Pipeline
12 699 (9.73%) Roadmaps
13 693 (9.65%) Business Intelligence
13 693 (9.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 645 (8.98%) Containerisation
15 612 (8.52%) ETL
16 601 (8.37%) Microservices
17 598 (8.33%) Data Engineering
18 588 (8.19%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,681 (23.41%) Python
2 1,430 (19.91%) SQL
3 771 (10.74%) PowerShell
4 577 (8.04%) Java
5 551 (7.67%) C#
6 426 (5.93%) JavaScript
7 334 (4.65%) Bash
8 284 (3.95%) Bicep
9 254 (3.54%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 61 (0.85%) Go
13 53 (0.74%) Scala
14 51 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.61%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.47%) Kotlin
17 33 (0.46%) R
18 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
19 28 (0.39%) Groovy
20 26 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,837 (25.58%) Security Cleared
2 1,478 (20.58%) SC Cleared
3 524 (7.30%) Degree
4 398 (5.54%) Azure Certification
5 245 (3.41%) DV Cleared
6 234 (3.26%) CISSP
7 206 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
8 188 (2.62%) Cisco Certification
9 177 (2.46%) AWS Certification
10 169 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 153 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
12 111 (1.55%) CISM
13 89 (1.24%) CCNP
14 73 (1.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 73 (1.02%) PMP
15 71 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 54 (0.75%) ISTQB
17 52 (0.72%) Master's Degree
17 52 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
18 46 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 506 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 379 (5.28%) QA
3 289 (4.02%) GDPR
4 266 (3.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 265 (3.69%) NIST
6 169 (2.35%) Accessibility
7 98 (1.36%) NCSC
8 94 (1.31%) SLA
9 71 (0.99%) WCAG
10 70 (0.97%) PCI DSS
11 69 (0.96%) GRC
12 68 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
13 56 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 51 (0.71%) PMO
15 32 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 28 (0.39%) HIPAA
17 24 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.29%) NIST 800
19 16 (0.22%) COBIT
20 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 910 (12.67%) Active Directory
2 774 (10.78%) Docker
3 208 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.92%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.91%) Virtual Machines
6 103 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.85%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.42%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 14 (0.19%) IAG
12 14 (0.19%) Postfix
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.097%) Varnish
15 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 6 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.070%) BitLocker
16 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.056%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,188 (16.54%) Terraform
2 1,053 (14.66%) Kubernetes
3 396 (5.51%) Microsoft Intune
4 385 (5.36%) Ansible
5 219 (3.05%) Grafana
6 181 (2.52%) Prometheus
7 129 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.53%) SCCM
9 58 (0.81%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.68%) Argo
11 46 (0.64%) Puppet
12 39 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 27 (0.38%) Istio
16 21 (0.29%) SCOM
16 21 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.28%) Packer
18 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
19 13 (0.18%) CASB
Vendors
1 2,447 (34.08%) Microsoft
2 673 (9.37%) Databricks
3 366 (5.10%) ServiceNow
4 299 (4.16%) VMware
5 282 (3.93%) Google
6 278 (3.87%) Oracle
7 214 (2.98%) Cisco
8 195 (2.72%) SAP
9 167 (2.33%) OpenAI
10 165 (2.30%) Splunk
11 143 (1.99%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.95%) CyberArk
13 131 (1.82%) Salesforce
14 121 (1.69%) Foundry
15 103 (1.43%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.30%) Zscaler
17 71 (0.99%) Okta
18 69 (0.96%) Fortinet
18 69 (0.96%) Informatica
19 67 (0.93%) Citrix