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 10 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,470 3,770 5,075
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.32% 15.41% 13.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.78% 40.82% 42.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,598 2,646 3,736
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £548
Median % change year-on-year - -4.11% -2.23%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £747
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £538
% change year-on-year +0.48% -2.79% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 145 25 46
10th Percentile £25.38 £25.58 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £27.40 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -44.44%
75th Percentile £76.75 £77.19 £61.19
90th Percentile £99.51 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -43.41%

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 14,777 9,235 11,979
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.98% 37.74% 31.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,038 6,295 8,585
10th Percentile £325 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £744
UK median daily rate £510 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 507 225 331
10th Percentile £15.97 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.36 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.00 £21.46
Median % change year-on-year +58.00% +16.50% -38.69%
75th Percentile £68.75 £37.75 £41.63
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.96 £28.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +28.41% +30.23% -41.89%

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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 3,443 £540 -1.82% 873
North of England +5 937 £500 +5.26% 494
South East +3 829 £503 +0.60% 614
Midlands +1 525 £500 +1.01% 269
North West +4 472 £500 +5.26% 291
South West +5 404 £530 +3.41% 253
Yorkshire +8 385 £500 +8.11% 120
West Midlands +2 384 £500 -4.76% 172
East of England +6 154 £550 -5.17% 183
East Midlands +3 131 £470 +1.62% 97
North East +5 92 £525 +5.00% 83
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
1 320 (4.95%) SharePoint
2 179 (2.77%) Confluence
3 171 (2.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 169 (2.61%) Apache Spark
5 104 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
6 97 (1.50%) Apache
7 33 (0.51%) SAS
8 23 (0.36%) IIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.17%) Appian
11 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
13 9 (0.14%) Mendix
14 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 89 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 58 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 22 (0.34%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.11%) Revit
9 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.077%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.062%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.062%) Notion
11 4 (0.062%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.015%) InDesign
13 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.015%) Sketch
13 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 92 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.17%) Maximo
5 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.11%) Shopify
9 6 (0.093%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.093%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.077%) NEC Housing
10 5 (0.077%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.077%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.077%) SimCorp Dimension
10 5 (0.077%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 4 (0.062%) Endur
11 4 (0.062%) Magento
11 4 (0.062%) Oracle FAH
11 4 (0.062%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,238 (34.59%) AWS
2 1,307 (20.20%) Azure DevOps
3 1,101 (17.02%) GCP
4 822 (12.70%) Entra ID
5 818 (12.64%) Power Platform
6 682 (10.54%) Microsoft 365
7 576 (8.90%) GitHub
8 436 (6.74%) Azure Data Factory
9 340 (5.26%) GitHub Actions
10 310 (4.79%) Serverless
11 279 (4.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 266 (4.11%) SaaS
13 234 (3.62%) Azure AKS
14 215 (3.32%) Dynamics 365
15 214 (3.31%) Power Automate
16 213 (3.29%) PaaS
17 197 (3.04%) Azure Monitor
18 179 (2.77%) Snowflake
19 174 (2.69%) IaaS
20 172 (2.66%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 391 (6.04%) Firewall
2 294 (4.54%) DNS
3 228 (3.52%) VPN
4 215 (3.32%) Network Security
5 181 (2.80%) WAN
6 160 (2.47%) DHCP
7 113 (1.75%) LAN
8 96 (1.48%) SD-WAN
9 90 (1.39%) TCP/IP
10 79 (1.22%) BGP
11 72 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
12 67 (1.04%) VLAN
13 66 (1.02%) OSPF
14 61 (0.94%) Kerberos
15 49 (0.76%) SAN
16 44 (0.68%) VXLAN
17 43 (0.66%) SSL
18 39 (0.60%) Wireless
19 32 (0.49%) Internet
19 32 (0.49%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 563 (8.70%) Power BI
2 389 (6.01%) SQL Server
3 320 (4.95%) Data Warehouse
4 313 (4.84%) Data Lake
5 217 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 188 (2.91%) Azure SQL Database
7 168 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 144 (2.23%) Metadata
9 134 (2.07%) Delta Lake
10 95 (1.47%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.36%) Big Data
12 86 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.14%) Tableau
14 73 (1.13%) MongoDB
15 60 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
16 56 (0.87%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.83%) Oracle Database
18 46 (0.71%) Spark SQL
19 44 (0.68%) MySQL
19 44 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 451 (6.97%) Git
2 441 (6.82%) JIRA
3 290 (4.48%) Jenkins
4 242 (3.74%) GitLab
5 101 (1.56%) Selenium
6 60 (0.93%) Postman
7 54 (0.83%) JMeter
8 51 (0.79%) Cucumber
9 48 (0.74%) JUnit
10 44 (0.68%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.63%) MLflow
12 37 (0.57%) SonarQube
13 30 (0.46%) Visual Studio
13 30 (0.46%) WebDriver
14 28 (0.43%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.42%) Cypress.io
16 26 (0.40%) Maven
17 25 (0.39%) Gatling
18 23 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
19 21 (0.32%) TestRail
General
1 1,648 (25.47%) Social Skills
2 1,252 (19.35%) Finance
3 650 (10.05%) Public Sector
4 589 (9.10%) Analytical Skills
5 367 (5.67%) Banking
6 193 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
7 148 (2.29%) Legal
8 126 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 119 (1.84%) Retail
10 85 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
11 68 (1.05%) Investment Banking
12 64 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
13 63 (0.97%) Financial Institution
13 63 (0.97%) Front Office
13 63 (0.97%) Law
14 55 (0.85%) Marketing
15 53 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
16 48 (0.74%) Telecoms
17 40 (0.62%) Local Government
18 39 (0.60%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,124 (17.37%) Architect
2 795 (12.29%) Senior
3 758 (11.72%) Developer
4 578 (8.93%) Azure Engineer
5 515 (7.96%) Data Engineer
6 497 (7.68%) Lead
7 399 (6.17%) Analyst
8 325 (5.02%) DevOps Engineer
9 322 (4.98%) Solutions Architect
10 262 (4.05%) Consultant
11 245 (3.79%) Cloud Engineer
12 237 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 175 (2.70%) Security Engineer
14 172 (2.66%) Azure Architect
15 170 (2.63%) Data Architect
16 166 (2.57%) Platform Engineer
17 148 (2.29%) Technical Architect
18 146 (2.26%) Business Analyst
19 145 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 143 (2.21%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 495 (7.65%) .NET
2 438 (6.77%) REST
3 259 (4.00%) React
4 239 (3.69%) Kafka
5 218 (3.37%) PySpark
6 195 (3.01%) OAuth
7 194 (3.00%) RESTful
8 172 (2.66%) LDAP
8 172 (2.66%) Node.js
9 163 (2.52%) Spring
10 158 (2.44%) AngularJS
11 134 (2.07%) SAML
12 133 (2.06%) Spring Boot
13 129 (1.99%) JSON
14 128 (1.98%) OpenID
15 125 (1.93%) SOAP
16 116 (1.79%) Middleware
17 115 (1.78%) HTML
18 102 (1.58%) .NET Framework
19 96 (1.48%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 664 (10.26%) Cloud Native
2 271 (4.19%) Onboarding
3 236 (3.65%) Product Ownership
4 202 (3.12%) Data Centre
5 195 (3.01%) Hybrid Cloud
6 171 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
7 167 (2.58%) Distributed Systems
8 157 (2.43%) Security Posture
9 150 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
10 139 (2.15%) Public Cloud
11 132 (2.04%) AI Agents
12 88 (1.36%) Data Structures
13 82 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
14 79 (1.22%) Replication
15 75 (1.16%) Management Information System
16 64 (0.99%) Enterprise Cloud
17 62 (0.96%) PKI
18 60 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
19 59 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
20 55 (0.85%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 759 (11.73%) Windows
2 316 (4.88%) Linux
3 236 (3.65%) Windows Server
4 109 (1.68%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.00%) Unix
6 63 (0.97%) Mac OS
7 62 (0.96%) Apple iOS
8 54 (0.83%) VMS
9 52 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 50 (0.77%) Android
11 27 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 27 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
12 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.17%) CentOS
15 10 (0.15%) Debian
16 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.093%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.093%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,378 (36.75%) DevOps
2 1,970 (30.45%) CI/CD
3 1,476 (22.81%) Agile
4 963 (14.88%) AI
5 948 (14.65%) Infrastructure as Code
6 943 (14.57%) Analytics
7 919 (14.20%) Problem-Solving
8 914 (14.13%) Migration
9 718 (11.10%) Data Modelling
10 710 (10.97%) Stakeholder Management
11 633 (9.78%) Data Pipeline
12 621 (9.60%) Continuous Improvement
13 614 (9.49%) Business Intelligence
14 609 (9.41%) ETL
15 598 (9.24%) Roadmaps
16 564 (8.72%) Containerisation
17 555 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 548 (8.47%) Microservices
19 531 (8.21%) Data Engineering
20 477 (7.37%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,517 (23.45%) Python
2 1,364 (21.08%) SQL
3 681 (10.53%) PowerShell
4 536 (8.28%) Java
5 523 (8.08%) C#
6 356 (5.50%) JavaScript
7 229 (3.54%) TypeScript
8 222 (3.43%) Bash
9 207 (3.20%) Bicep
10 86 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 77 (1.19%) T-SQL
12 76 (1.17%) Scala
13 68 (1.05%) Go
14 42 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
15 33 (0.51%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.48%) PL/SQL
16 31 (0.48%) R
17 24 (0.37%) Kotlin
18 22 (0.34%) C++
19 14 (0.22%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,626 (25.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,367 (21.13%) SC Cleared
3 465 (7.19%) Degree
4 356 (5.50%) Azure Certification
5 203 (3.14%) CISSP
6 173 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 159 (2.46%) DV Cleared
8 154 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
9 153 (2.36%) Microsoft Certification
10 143 (2.21%) AWS Certification
11 124 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
12 109 (1.68%) CISM
13 70 (1.08%) CCNP
14 69 (1.07%) PMP
15 62 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 59 (0.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 49 (0.76%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.71%) Master's Degree
18 46 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
19 39 (0.60%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (6.92%) Data Quality
2 333 (5.15%) QA
3 296 (4.57%) GDPR
4 251 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 239 (3.69%) NIST
6 114 (1.76%) Accessibility
7 90 (1.39%) NCSC
8 86 (1.33%) SLA
9 73 (1.13%) PCI DSS
10 65 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
11 59 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 48 (0.74%) GRC
13 47 (0.73%) WCAG
14 43 (0.66%) PMO
15 34 (0.53%) HIPAA
16 27 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
18 21 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.25%) ISO 20022
20 15 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 841 (13.00%) Active Directory
2 665 (10.28%) Docker
3 197 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 120 (1.85%) Virtual Desktop
5 108 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
6 97 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 64 (0.99%) vSphere
8 53 (0.82%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.42%) Firmware
10 26 (0.40%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.26%) Postfix
13 10 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.11%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.093%) KVM
16 6 (0.093%) RACF
17 5 (0.077%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
17 5 (0.077%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.077%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,016 (15.70%) Terraform
2 894 (13.82%) Kubernetes
3 352 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 294 (4.54%) Ansible
5 175 (2.70%) Grafana
6 151 (2.33%) Prometheus
7 143 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
8 92 (1.42%) SCCM
9 74 (1.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
10 37 (0.57%) Progress Chef
11 34 (0.53%) Argo
11 34 (0.53%) Puppet
12 31 (0.48%) Istio
13 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
14 24 (0.37%) vCenter Server
15 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
16 16 (0.25%) Packer
17 14 (0.22%) HP ALM
17 14 (0.22%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,109 (32.60%) Microsoft
2 629 (9.72%) Databricks
3 292 (4.51%) ServiceNow
4 272 (4.20%) VMware
5 248 (3.83%) Oracle
6 236 (3.65%) Google
7 185 (2.86%) SAP
8 173 (2.67%) Cisco
9 158 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 137 (2.12%) CyberArk
11 131 (2.02%) Splunk
12 123 (1.90%) Palo Alto
13 107 (1.65%) Foundry
14 105 (1.62%) Salesforce
15 84 (1.30%) Okta
16 75 (1.16%) Dynatrace
17 64 (0.99%) Citrix
18 62 (0.96%) BeyondTrust
19 61 (0.94%) Zscaler
20 60 (0.93%) Red Hat