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 14 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,178 3,719 4,909
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.21% 15.42% 13.43%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.25% 41.48% 42.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,426 2,622 3,610
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -2.68%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £640
90th Percentile £720 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 24 47
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -40.32%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £93.61 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -41.57%

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 14,284 8,966 11,674
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.16% 37.17% 31.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,786 6,222 8,419
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £744
UK median daily rate £501 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -2.82% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 467 194 323
10th Percentile £15.57 £15.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.40 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £42.69 £25.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.39% +21.43% -34.98%
75th Percentile £67.67 £37.50 £34.38
90th Percentile £81.00 £72.13 £65.10
UK median hourly rate £37.58 £27.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +36.65% +28.69% -38.94%

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 14 May 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 14 May 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 14 May 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 3,298 £538 -2.27% 1,009
North of England +3 857 £500 +5.26% 580
South East +3 829 £500 -4.76% 659
Midlands -5 490 £490 -2.00% 295
North West +3 449 £500 +0.81% 309
South West +5 378 £525 - 281
West Midlands 0 358 £498 -5.24% 169
Yorkshire +5 348 £500 +14.29% 166
East of England +4 145 £550 -6.78% 193
East Midlands +3 122 £450 -2.70% 125
North East 0 69 £525 +9.09% 106
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
1 292 (4.73%) SharePoint
2 174 (2.82%) Confluence
3 172 (2.78%) Microsoft Exchange
4 169 (2.74%) Apache Spark
5 89 (1.44%) Apache
6 84 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) IIS
8 17 (0.28%) SAS
9 13 (0.21%) ArcGIS
9 13 (0.21%) CMS
9 13 (0.21%) Mendix
10 12 (0.19%) Appian
10 12 (0.19%) Camunda
10 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.081%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.081%) Umbraco
14 5 (0.081%) WebLogic
Applications
1 89 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.081%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.081%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.065%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.065%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.065%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.049%) Revit
10 3 (0.049%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.016%) InDesign
11 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 88 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Maximo
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.097%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.081%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.065%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.065%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.065%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.065%) Shopify
9 4 (0.065%) SimCorp Dimension
10 3 (0.049%) Magento
10 3 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.049%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,134 (34.54%) AWS
2 1,248 (20.20%) Azure DevOps
3 1,125 (18.21%) GCP
4 792 (12.82%) Power Platform
5 766 (12.40%) Entra ID
6 648 (10.49%) Microsoft 365
7 572 (9.26%) GitHub
8 453 (7.33%) Azure Data Factory
9 323 (5.23%) GitHub Actions
10 313 (5.07%) Serverless
11 300 (4.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 244 (3.95%) SaaS
13 229 (3.71%) Azure AKS
14 220 (3.56%) Dynamics 365
15 211 (3.42%) PaaS
16 210 (3.40%) Power Automate
17 201 (3.25%) Azure Monitor
18 173 (2.80%) Azure Functions
19 170 (2.75%) PowerApps
20 169 (2.74%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 387 (6.26%) Firewall
2 275 (4.45%) DNS
3 233 (3.77%) VPN
4 206 (3.33%) Network Security
5 166 (2.69%) WAN
6 151 (2.44%) DHCP
7 114 (1.85%) LAN
8 87 (1.41%) TCP/IP
9 85 (1.38%) SD-WAN
10 74 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
11 68 (1.10%) VLAN
12 66 (1.07%) BGP
12 66 (1.07%) Kerberos
13 57 (0.92%) OSPF
14 45 (0.73%) SAN
15 40 (0.65%) Wireless
16 38 (0.62%) SSL
17 32 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 29 (0.47%) HTTP
18 29 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 551 (8.92%) Power BI
2 369 (5.97%) SQL Server
3 321 (5.20%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.89%) Data Lake
5 209 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
6 195 (3.16%) Azure SQL Database
7 166 (2.69%) NoSQL
8 142 (2.30%) Metadata
9 137 (2.22%) Delta Lake
10 95 (1.54%) Relational Database
11 86 (1.39%) Big Data
12 84 (1.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 77 (1.25%) MongoDB
14 69 (1.12%) Tableau
15 61 (0.99%) Oracle Database
15 61 (0.99%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.89%) BigQuery
17 47 (0.76%) Star Schema
18 45 (0.73%) Spark SQL
19 42 (0.68%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 450 (7.28%) Git
2 434 (7.02%) JIRA
3 304 (4.92%) Jenkins
4 235 (3.80%) GitLab
5 92 (1.49%) Selenium
6 59 (0.96%) Postman
7 50 (0.81%) MLflow
8 49 (0.79%) Cucumber
9 48 (0.78%) JUnit
10 46 (0.74%) JMeter
11 39 (0.63%) REST Assured
12 38 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 31 (0.50%) Artifactory
14 28 (0.45%) Cypress.io
15 25 (0.40%) Maven
16 24 (0.39%) Visual Studio
16 24 (0.39%) WebDriver
17 23 (0.37%) Bitbucket
17 23 (0.37%) Gatling
18 21 (0.34%) TestRail
General
1 1,581 (25.59%) Social Skills
2 1,166 (18.87%) Finance
3 623 (10.08%) Public Sector
4 563 (9.11%) Analytical Skills
5 357 (5.78%) Banking
6 177 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 143 (2.31%) Legal
8 98 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 93 (1.51%) Retail
10 85 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
11 71 (1.15%) Financial Institution
12 65 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
13 62 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
13 62 (1.00%) Investment Banking
14 60 (0.97%) Front Office
15 58 (0.94%) Marketing
16 57 (0.92%) Law
17 51 (0.83%) Telecoms
18 39 (0.63%) Military
19 37 (0.60%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,037 (16.79%) Architect
2 750 (12.14%) Senior
3 743 (12.03%) Developer
4 569 (9.21%) Azure Engineer
5 530 (8.58%) Data Engineer
6 443 (7.17%) Lead
7 388 (6.28%) Analyst
8 318 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 279 (4.52%) Solutions Architect
10 254 (4.11%) Consultant
11 202 (3.27%) Cloud Engineer
12 199 (3.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 165 (2.67%) Azure Architect
14 163 (2.64%) Security Engineer
15 151 (2.44%) Platform Engineer
16 143 (2.31%) Data Architect
17 142 (2.30%) Technical Architect
18 134 (2.17%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 132 (2.14%) Business Analyst
20 131 (2.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 461 (7.46%) .NET
2 392 (6.35%) REST
3 248 (4.01%) React
4 239 (3.87%) Kafka
5 229 (3.71%) PySpark
6 188 (3.04%) Node.js
7 180 (2.91%) RESTful
8 168 (2.72%) OAuth
9 167 (2.70%) Spring
10 163 (2.64%) LDAP
11 153 (2.48%) AngularJS
12 135 (2.19%) Spring Boot
13 121 (1.96%) Middleware
14 120 (1.94%) JSON
15 117 (1.89%) SOAP
16 114 (1.85%) HTML
17 112 (1.81%) SAML
18 106 (1.72%) OpenID
19 97 (1.57%) YAML
20 92 (1.49%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 605 (9.79%) Cloud Native
2 251 (4.06%) Onboarding
3 208 (3.37%) Product Ownership
4 180 (2.91%) Hybrid Cloud
5 169 (2.74%) Data Centre
6 157 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
7 145 (2.35%) Distributed Systems
8 143 (2.31%) Security Posture
9 141 (2.28%) Enterprise Software
10 130 (2.10%) Public Cloud
11 118 (1.91%) AI Agents
12 86 (1.39%) Data Structures
12 86 (1.39%) Replication
13 69 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
14 65 (1.05%) Management Information System
15 57 (0.92%) PKI
16 55 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
17 53 (0.86%) Low-Code
18 50 (0.81%) Virtual Team
19 49 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 702 (11.36%) Windows
2 312 (5.05%) Linux
3 207 (3.35%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.81%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.05%) Unix
6 60 (0.97%) Mac OS
7 56 (0.91%) Apple iOS
7 56 (0.91%) VMS
8 48 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 37 (0.60%) Android
10 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.32%) Ubuntu
13 11 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.13%) CentOS
16 7 (0.11%) Debian
16 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.097%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.097%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,303 (37.28%) DevOps
2 1,902 (30.79%) CI/CD
3 1,421 (23.00%) Agile
4 931 (15.07%) Analytics
5 899 (14.55%) Problem-Solving
6 886 (14.34%) Infrastructure as Code
7 877 (14.20%) AI
8 842 (13.63%) Migration
9 707 (11.44%) Data Modelling
10 623 (10.08%) Stakeholder Management
11 611 (9.89%) Business Intelligence
12 609 (9.86%) Data Pipeline
13 592 (9.58%) ETL
14 581 (9.40%) Continuous Improvement
15 576 (9.32%) Containerisation
16 534 (8.64%) Microservices
17 532 (8.61%) Data Engineering
18 528 (8.55%) Roadmaps
19 501 (8.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 460 (7.45%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,506 (24.38%) Python
2 1,329 (21.51%) SQL
3 659 (10.67%) PowerShell
4 509 (8.24%) C#
5 505 (8.17%) Java
6 355 (5.75%) JavaScript
7 219 (3.54%) Bash
8 210 (3.40%) TypeScript
9 194 (3.14%) Bicep
10 88 (1.42%) Scala
11 84 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 77 (1.25%) T-SQL
13 73 (1.18%) Go
14 50 (0.81%) Kusto Query Language
15 43 (0.70%) PL/SQL
16 38 (0.62%) R
17 34 (0.55%) Shell Script
18 23 (0.37%) C++
19 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,564 (25.32%) Security Cleared
2 1,307 (21.16%) SC Cleared
3 438 (7.09%) Degree
4 347 (5.62%) Azure Certification
5 183 (2.96%) CISSP
6 170 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
7 144 (2.33%) Cisco Certification
8 137 (2.22%) DV Cleared
9 135 (2.19%) Microsoft Certification
10 130 (2.10%) AWS Certification
11 106 (1.72%) CISM
12 101 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
13 68 (1.10%) CCNP
14 64 (1.04%) PMP
15 60 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 56 (0.91%) TOGAF Certification
17 53 (0.86%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 51 (0.83%) Master's Degree
19 47 (0.76%) ISTQB
20 37 (0.60%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (7.19%) Data Quality
2 331 (5.36%) QA
3 317 (5.13%) GDPR
4 252 (4.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 234 (3.79%) NIST
6 97 (1.57%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.34%) NCSC
8 78 (1.26%) PCI DSS
9 64 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
10 62 (1.00%) SLA
11 58 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 50 (0.81%) PMO
13 46 (0.74%) GRC
14 34 (0.55%) HIPAA
14 34 (0.55%) WCAG
15 23 (0.37%) NIST 800
16 22 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 19 (0.31%) ISO 20022
18 17 (0.28%) PSD2
18 17 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 804 (13.01%) Active Directory
2 677 (10.96%) Docker
3 178 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
4 107 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
5 87 (1.41%) Hyper-V
6 52 (0.84%) vSphere
7 35 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (0.42%) Firmware
9 20 (0.32%) NFS
10 18 (0.29%) VMware NSX
11 12 (0.19%) Postfix
12 11 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.11%) Varnish
14 6 (0.097%) RACF
15 5 (0.081%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 5 (0.081%) HDFS
15 5 (0.081%) KVM
15 5 (0.081%) Snort
16 4 (0.065%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 971 (15.72%) Terraform
2 892 (14.44%) Kubernetes
3 332 (5.37%) Microsoft Intune
4 280 (4.53%) Ansible
5 166 (2.69%) Grafana
6 141 (2.28%) Prometheus
7 131 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 100 (1.62%) SCCM
9 67 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 34 (0.55%) Puppet
11 33 (0.53%) Istio
12 31 (0.50%) Argo
13 28 (0.45%) Progress Chef
14 27 (0.44%) Jamf Pro
15 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
16 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.28%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.24%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.24%) Kubeflow
19 14 (0.23%) Nmap
Vendors
1 2,009 (32.52%) Microsoft
2 627 (10.15%) Databricks
3 279 (4.52%) ServiceNow
4 258 (4.18%) Oracle
5 249 (4.03%) VMware
6 248 (4.01%) Google
7 184 (2.98%) SAP
8 162 (2.62%) Cisco
9 158 (2.56%) OpenAI
10 135 (2.19%) Splunk
11 134 (2.17%) CyberArk
12 109 (1.76%) Palo Alto
13 99 (1.60%) Foundry
14 89 (1.44%) Salesforce
15 78 (1.26%) Okta
16 68 (1.10%) BeyondTrust
17 66 (1.07%) Citrix
18 65 (1.05%) Dynatrace
19 62 (1.00%) Zscaler
20 58 (0.94%) Informatica