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

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,002 3,877 5,039
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.69% 15.99% 13.39%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.89% 42.26% 41.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,313 2,766 3,710
10th Percentile £358 £353 £349
25th Percentile £425 £425 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £643
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -5.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 28 53
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.89 £26.09 £22.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £44.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.94% +26.43% -34.40%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £85.40 £79.09 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +76.92% -7.14% -35.78%

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 13,995 9,174 12,094
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.58% 37.84% 32.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,640 6,466 8,691
10th Percentile £313 £313 £280
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 424 180 323
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.43 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £42.59 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +60.73% +26.19% -18.75%
75th Percentile £67.50 £42.23 £35.00
90th Percentile £80.76 £75.05 £61.20
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £26.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +50.94% +26.19% -23.64%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 3,273 £538 -2.27% 1,004
North of England +3 812 £488 +0.52% 604
South East +1 743 £500 -6.98% 685
Midlands 0 495 £496 -0.75% 369
North West +1 437 £476 -4.80% 303
West Midlands -2 368 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 348 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire -1 330 £488 +8.33% 208
East of England +8 147 £550 -5.17% 207
East Midlands 0 117 £433 -8.84% 163
North East -4 48 £525 +9.09% 97
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 (4.83%) SharePoint
2 180 (3.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 167 (2.78%) Apache Spark
4 166 (2.77%) Confluence
5 100 (1.67%) Apache
6 90 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.37%) SAS
8 21 (0.35%) IIS
9 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 16 (0.27%) Appian
11 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.25%) Camunda
12 13 (0.22%) CMS
13 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.18%) Mendix
14 9 (0.15%) Jupyter
14 9 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 5 (0.083%) BizTalk Server
16 5 (0.083%) WebLogic
Applications
1 107 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 52 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.77%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.100%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.083%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.083%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.067%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.067%) Weka
11 3 (0.050%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.033%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.017%) InDesign
13 1 (0.017%) Revit
Business Applications
1 101 (1.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 7 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.100%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.067%) Endur
9 4 (0.067%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle 11i
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle General Ledger
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle Payables
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.067%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.067%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,092 (34.86%) AWS
2 1,246 (20.76%) Azure DevOps
3 1,162 (19.36%) GCP
4 805 (13.41%) Power Platform
5 771 (12.85%) Entra ID
6 669 (11.15%) Microsoft 365
7 593 (9.88%) GitHub
8 451 (7.51%) Azure Data Factory
9 340 (5.66%) GitHub Actions
10 331 (5.51%) Serverless
11 284 (4.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 246 (4.10%) SaaS
13 240 (4.00%) Dynamics 365
14 222 (3.70%) Azure AKS
15 218 (3.63%) Azure Monitor
16 217 (3.62%) Power Automate
17 212 (3.53%) PaaS
18 197 (3.28%) Azure Functions
19 192 (3.20%) Azure Logic Apps
20 176 (2.93%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 399 (6.65%) Firewall
2 272 (4.53%) DNS
3 243 (4.05%) VPN
4 201 (3.35%) Network Security
5 157 (2.62%) WAN
6 149 (2.48%) DHCP
7 115 (1.92%) LAN
8 94 (1.57%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.30%) SD-WAN
10 76 (1.27%) VLAN
11 72 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
12 65 (1.08%) Kerberos
13 52 (0.87%) BGP
14 46 (0.77%) OSPF
15 39 (0.65%) Wireless
16 36 (0.60%) SAN
17 35 (0.58%) HTTP
18 32 (0.53%) SSL
19 29 (0.48%) MPLS
20 27 (0.45%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 559 (9.31%) Power BI
2 346 (5.76%) SQL Server
3 329 (5.48%) Data Warehouse
4 283 (4.72%) Data Lake
5 209 (3.48%) Azure SQL Database
6 204 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
7 179 (2.98%) NoSQL
8 145 (2.42%) Metadata
9 131 (2.18%) Delta Lake
10 94 (1.57%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 80 (1.33%) Big Data
13 79 (1.32%) Tableau
14 77 (1.28%) MongoDB
15 61 (1.02%) Oracle Database
16 57 (0.95%) BigQuery
17 53 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
18 49 (0.82%) MySQL
19 45 (0.75%) Star Schema
20 44 (0.73%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 444 (7.40%) Git
2 413 (6.88%) JIRA
3 304 (5.06%) Jenkins
4 223 (3.72%) GitLab
5 105 (1.75%) Selenium
6 69 (1.15%) Postman
7 61 (1.02%) JUnit
8 57 (0.95%) Cucumber
9 53 (0.88%) JMeter
10 49 (0.82%) MLflow
11 40 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 37 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 36 (0.60%) Cypress.io
14 33 (0.55%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
15 28 (0.47%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.43%) TestRail
17 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
18 22 (0.37%) Mockito
18 22 (0.37%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,669 (27.81%) Social Skills
2 1,123 (18.71%) Finance
3 647 (10.78%) Public Sector
4 601 (10.01%) Analytical Skills
5 355 (5.91%) Banking
6 194 (3.23%) Documentation Skills
7 138 (2.30%) Legal
8 103 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 83 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
9 83 (1.38%) Retail
10 82 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
11 81 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
12 68 (1.13%) Marketing
13 66 (1.10%) Financial Institution
14 65 (1.08%) Law
14 65 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 54 (0.90%) Investment Banking
16 53 (0.88%) Front Office
17 44 (0.73%) Local Government
18 36 (0.60%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 999 (16.64%) Architect
2 795 (13.25%) Developer
3 718 (11.96%) Senior
4 539 (8.98%) Azure Engineer
5 510 (8.50%) Data Engineer
6 452 (7.53%) Lead
7 384 (6.40%) Analyst
8 287 (4.78%) DevOps Engineer
9 268 (4.47%) Solutions Architect
10 251 (4.18%) Consultant
11 170 (2.83%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 169 (2.82%) Cloud Engineer
13 154 (2.57%) Platform Engineer
14 152 (2.53%) Azure Architect
15 144 (2.40%) Security Engineer
16 140 (2.33%) Senior Developer
17 124 (2.07%) Data Architect
18 123 (2.05%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 119 (1.98%) Software Engineer
20 117 (1.95%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 452 (7.53%) .NET
2 392 (6.53%) REST
3 267 (4.45%) React
4 248 (4.13%) Kafka
5 224 (3.73%) PySpark
6 212 (3.53%) Node.js
7 197 (3.28%) RESTful
8 181 (3.02%) Spring
9 177 (2.95%) OAuth
10 159 (2.65%) AngularJS
11 148 (2.47%) LDAP
12 143 (2.38%) Spring Boot
13 131 (2.18%) HTML
14 129 (2.15%) Middleware
15 122 (2.03%) JSON
16 116 (1.93%) SAML
16 116 (1.93%) SOAP
17 113 (1.88%) CSS
18 112 (1.87%) PyTorch
19 106 (1.77%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 543 (9.05%) Cloud Native
2 241 (4.02%) Onboarding
3 221 (3.68%) Product Ownership
4 176 (2.93%) Hybrid Cloud
5 153 (2.55%) Security Posture
6 152 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
7 143 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 142 (2.37%) Data Centre
9 135 (2.25%) Public Cloud
10 123 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
11 102 (1.70%) AI Agents
12 82 (1.37%) Replication
13 81 (1.35%) Data Structures
14 65 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
15 64 (1.07%) Management Information System
16 57 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
17 56 (0.93%) PKI
18 53 (0.88%) Algorithms
19 46 (0.77%) Low-Code
19 46 (0.77%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 658 (10.96%) Windows
2 311 (5.18%) Linux
3 203 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.97%) Windows 10
5 67 (1.12%) VMS
6 55 (0.92%) Unix
7 43 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 41 (0.68%) Mac OS
9 32 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 25 (0.42%) Android
11 18 (0.30%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
15 6 (0.100%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.083%) AIX
16 5 (0.083%) CentOS
16 5 (0.083%) CoreOS
17 4 (0.067%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,241 (37.34%) DevOps
2 1,815 (30.24%) CI/CD
3 1,396 (23.26%) Agile
4 984 (16.39%) Problem-Solving
5 929 (15.48%) Analytics
6 860 (14.33%) AI
7 820 (13.66%) Infrastructure as Code
8 786 (13.10%) Migration
9 674 (11.23%) Data Modelling
10 624 (10.40%) Stakeholder Management
11 620 (10.33%) Business Intelligence
12 588 (9.80%) Continuous Improvement
13 570 (9.50%) ETL
14 568 (9.46%) Data Pipeline
15 563 (9.38%) Containerisation
16 542 (9.03%) Microservices
17 539 (8.98%) Data Engineering
18 510 (8.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 508 (8.46%) Machine Learning
20 483 (8.05%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,545 (25.74%) Python
2 1,360 (22.66%) SQL
3 657 (10.95%) PowerShell
4 505 (8.41%) C#
5 502 (8.36%) Java
6 410 (6.83%) JavaScript
7 234 (3.90%) TypeScript
8 218 (3.63%) Bash
9 192 (3.20%) Bicep
10 92 (1.53%) Scala
11 77 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 74 (1.23%) Go
13 71 (1.18%) PL/SQL
14 68 (1.13%) Kusto Query Language
15 66 (1.10%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.68%) R
17 36 (0.60%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.37%) C++
18 22 (0.37%) PHP
19 17 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,497 (24.94%) Security Cleared
2 1,242 (20.69%) SC Cleared
3 451 (7.51%) Degree
4 341 (5.68%) Azure Certification
5 193 (3.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 171 (2.85%) CISSP
7 149 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
8 124 (2.07%) Cisco Certification
9 123 (2.05%) DV Cleared
10 114 (1.90%) AWS Certification
11 102 (1.70%) CISM
12 94 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
13 67 (1.12%) CCNP
14 64 (1.07%) Master's Degree
15 55 (0.92%) PMP
16 54 (0.90%) PMI Certification
17 51 (0.85%) TOGAF Certification
18 50 (0.83%) ISTQB
19 40 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 431 (7.18%) Data Quality
2 355 (5.91%) GDPR
3 330 (5.50%) QA
4 267 (4.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 230 (3.83%) NIST
6 94 (1.57%) Accessibility
7 91 (1.52%) NCSC
8 82 (1.37%) PCI DSS
9 60 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
10 55 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 54 (0.90%) SLA
12 50 (0.83%) PMO
13 38 (0.63%) GRC
14 33 (0.55%) HIPAA
14 33 (0.55%) WCAG
15 24 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 24 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 22 (0.37%) ISO 20022
17 21 (0.35%) SOC 2
18 18 (0.30%) PSD2
System Software
1 811 (13.51%) Active Directory
2 699 (11.65%) Docker
3 185 (3.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 99 (1.65%) Virtual Machines
5 85 (1.42%) Hyper-V
6 78 (1.30%) Virtual Desktop
7 74 (1.23%) vSphere
8 32 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
8 32 (0.53%) VMware NSX
9 22 (0.37%) Firmware
10 16 (0.27%) NFS
11 10 (0.17%) Postfix
12 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 6 (0.100%) RACF
13 6 (0.100%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.100%) Snort
13 6 (0.100%) Varnish
14 5 (0.083%) BitLocker
14 5 (0.083%) GPFS
14 5 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 937 (15.61%) Terraform
2 892 (14.86%) Kubernetes
3 336 (5.60%) Microsoft Intune
4 268 (4.47%) Ansible
5 160 (2.67%) Grafana
6 146 (2.43%) Single Sign-On
7 132 (2.20%) Prometheus
8 107 (1.78%) SCCM
9 73 (1.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.67%) Argo
11 33 (0.55%) Istio
12 29 (0.48%) Puppet
13 27 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.45%) vCenter Server
14 21 (0.35%) FortiGate
14 21 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
15 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
15 17 (0.28%) vRealize
16 16 (0.27%) HP ALM
16 16 (0.27%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,949 (32.47%) Microsoft
2 622 (10.36%) Databricks
3 298 (4.97%) Oracle
4 277 (4.62%) Google
5 262 (4.37%) ServiceNow
6 252 (4.20%) VMware
7 175 (2.92%) SAP
8 165 (2.75%) Cisco
9 157 (2.62%) OpenAI
10 141 (2.35%) Splunk
11 127 (2.12%) CyberArk
12 106 (1.77%) Foundry
13 93 (1.55%) Palo Alto
14 83 (1.38%) Salesforce
15 82 (1.37%) Okta
16 71 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
17 70 (1.17%) IBM
18 64 (1.07%) Citrix
19 63 (1.05%) Informatica
20 62 (1.03%) Red Hat