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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,947 4,064 5,173
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.51% 14.94% 14.30%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.37% 40.00% 43.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,887 2,831 3,787
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £443
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 £524 £525
% change year-on-year +0.19% -0.19% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 32 40
10th Percentile £20.50 £25.10 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.22 £27.24 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £42.34
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +2.09% -29.32%
75th Percentile £80.00 £76.56 £61.60
90th Percentile £100.85 £100.00 £70.22
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £48.09
% change year-on-year +7.48% +11.25% -19.72%

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 15,658 10,159 11,960
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.96% 37.34% 33.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,495 6,871 8,501
10th Percentile £325 £313 £311
25th Percentile £421 £409 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.95% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £519 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.60% -4.67% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 555 267 303
10th Percentile £16.70 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.50 £17.96 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.06% +14.32% -36.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £42.68 £43.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £36.71 £27.63 £22.00
% change year-on-year +32.86% +25.59% -37.14%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 3,622 £550 - 930
North of England +7 1,011 £500 +2.04% 464
South East +2 873 £525 +5.00% 582
Midlands +3 623 £500 +1.01% 254
North West +7 530 £503 +0.50% 237
West Midlands +1 468 £499 -5.00% 162
South West +7 450 £540 +7.95% 205
Yorkshire +3 404 £500 +5.26% 153
East of England +6 189 £550 -2.22% 153
East Midlands +3 144 £488 +5.41% 92
North East +4 90 £525 +5.00% 82
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
1 351 (5.05%) SharePoint
2 231 (3.33%) Confluence
3 173 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 162 (2.33%) Apache Spark
5 115 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
6 104 (1.50%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 17 (0.24%) CMS
10 15 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 13 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.14%) Camunda
13 9 (0.13%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.086%) Appian
15 6 (0.086%) Documentum
16 5 (0.072%) Ethereum
16 5 (0.072%) Mendix
Applications
1 110 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
3 67 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
4 33 (0.48%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 27 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.13%) Trello
10 8 (0.12%) Revit
11 4 (0.058%) Notion
12 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.043%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.029%) Houdini
13 2 (0.029%) NUKE
13 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 101 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.19%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.12%) Magento
5 8 (0.12%) Maximo
6 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.10%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.10%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.086%) 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%) Quorum
9 4 (0.058%) Ripple
9 4 (0.058%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,459 (35.40%) AWS
2 1,429 (20.57%) Azure DevOps
3 1,166 (16.78%) GCP
4 904 (13.01%) Entra ID
5 875 (12.60%) Power Platform
6 698 (10.05%) Microsoft 365
7 644 (9.27%) GitHub
8 420 (6.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 382 (5.50%) GitHub Actions
10 300 (4.32%) Serverless
11 290 (4.17%) SaaS
12 285 (4.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 242 (3.48%) Azure AKS
14 235 (3.38%) Power Automate
15 231 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
16 223 (3.21%) Dynamics 365
16 223 (3.21%) PaaS
17 206 (2.97%) PowerApps
18 198 (2.85%) Snowflake
19 191 (2.75%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 452 (6.51%) Firewall
2 334 (4.81%) DNS
3 269 (3.87%) VPN
4 233 (3.35%) Network Security
5 182 (2.62%) WAN
6 173 (2.49%) DHCP
7 137 (1.97%) TCP/IP
8 119 (1.71%) LAN
9 110 (1.58%) BGP
10 90 (1.30%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.27%) OSPF
12 81 (1.17%) VLAN
13 70 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.82%) SSL
15 56 (0.81%) SAN
16 50 (0.72%) Kerberos
17 49 (0.71%) Wireless
18 46 (0.66%) IPsec
19 41 (0.59%) VXLAN
20 38 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 614 (8.84%) Power BI
2 411 (5.92%) SQL Server
3 350 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.35%) Data Lake
5 253 (3.64%) PostgreSQL
6 174 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
6 174 (2.50%) NoSQL
7 162 (2.33%) Metadata
8 120 (1.73%) Delta Lake
9 117 (1.68%) Relational Database
10 93 (1.34%) Big Data
11 84 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 71 (1.02%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.99%) Tableau
14 62 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.82%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.78%) MySQL
17 53 (0.76%) Oracle Database
18 47 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
18 47 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 523 (7.53%) JIRA
2 512 (7.37%) Git
3 329 (4.74%) Jenkins
4 247 (3.56%) GitLab
5 105 (1.51%) Selenium
6 57 (0.82%) JUnit
7 54 (0.78%) Postman
8 53 (0.76%) JMeter
9 47 (0.68%) Cucumber
10 42 (0.60%) SonarQube
11 41 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 38 (0.55%) REST Assured
12 38 (0.55%) WebDriver
13 36 (0.52%) MLflow
13 36 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.50%) Maven
15 28 (0.40%) Gradle
16 27 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
17 24 (0.35%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 1,756 (25.28%) Social Skills
2 1,363 (19.62%) Finance
3 744 (10.71%) Public Sector
4 691 (9.95%) Analytical Skills
5 393 (5.66%) Banking
6 202 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 164 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 164 (2.36%) Retail
8 155 (2.23%) Legal
9 91 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
10 79 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 76 (1.09%) Telecoms
12 68 (0.98%) Law
13 64 (0.92%) Front Office
13 64 (0.92%) Investment Banking
14 63 (0.91%) Marketing
15 62 (0.89%) Financial Institution
16 61 (0.88%) Manufacturing
17 53 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
18 48 (0.69%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,224 (17.62%) Architect
2 860 (12.38%) Senior
3 838 (12.06%) Developer
4 603 (8.68%) Azure Engineer
5 560 (8.06%) Lead
6 527 (7.59%) Data Engineer
7 434 (6.25%) Analyst
8 372 (5.35%) Solutions Architect
9 333 (4.79%) DevOps Engineer
10 284 (4.09%) Cloud Engineer
11 282 (4.06%) Consultant
12 254 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 199 (2.86%) Data Architect
14 177 (2.55%) Azure Architect
15 173 (2.49%) Platform Engineer
16 170 (2.45%) Security Engineer
17 165 (2.38%) Business Analyst
18 163 (2.35%) Project Manager
19 162 (2.33%) Technical Architect
20 152 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 521 (7.50%) .NET
2 470 (6.77%) REST
3 270 (3.89%) Kafka
3 270 (3.89%) React
4 222 (3.20%) RESTful
5 215 (3.09%) PySpark
6 211 (3.04%) OAuth
7 173 (2.49%) Spring
8 164 (2.36%) Node.js
9 156 (2.25%) AngularJS
10 154 (2.22%) JSON
11 141 (2.03%) Spring Boot
12 136 (1.96%) SAML
13 126 (1.81%) OpenID
14 125 (1.80%) LDAP
15 124 (1.78%) HTML
16 118 (1.70%) .NET Framework
17 114 (1.64%) Middleware
17 114 (1.64%) OAuth2
18 111 (1.60%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 735 (10.58%) Cloud Native
2 312 (4.49%) Onboarding
3 281 (4.04%) Product Ownership
4 226 (3.25%) Data Centre
5 225 (3.24%) Distributed Systems
6 211 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
7 204 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
8 176 (2.53%) AI Agents
9 151 (2.17%) Security Posture
10 145 (2.09%) Enterprise Software
11 125 (1.80%) Public Cloud
12 112 (1.61%) Data Structures
13 99 (1.43%) Management Information System
14 93 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 92 (1.32%) Replication
16 83 (1.19%) PKI
17 81 (1.17%) Enterprise Cloud
18 75 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
19 69 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
20 60 (0.86%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 820 (11.80%) Windows
2 368 (5.30%) Linux
3 255 (3.67%) Windows Server
4 108 (1.55%) Windows 10
5 71 (1.02%) Unix
6 69 (0.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 63 (0.91%) Android
7 63 (0.91%) Mac OS
8 61 (0.88%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.63%) VMS
10 40 (0.58%) Ubuntu
11 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.22%) 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 (0.086%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.086%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.072%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,540 (36.56%) DevOps
2 2,128 (30.63%) CI/CD
3 1,727 (24.86%) Agile
4 1,103 (15.88%) AI
5 1,040 (14.97%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,017 (14.64%) Migration
7 996 (14.34%) Analytics
8 937 (13.49%) Problem-Solving
9 918 (13.21%) Stakeholder Management
10 784 (11.29%) Data Modelling
11 734 (10.57%) Continuous Improvement
12 679 (9.77%) Data Pipeline
13 672 (9.67%) Roadmaps
14 662 (9.53%) Business Intelligence
15 620 (8.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 619 (8.91%) Containerisation
17 610 (8.78%) Microservices
18 598 (8.61%) ETL
19 576 (8.29%) Data Engineering
20 536 (7.72%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,621 (23.33%) Python
2 1,398 (20.12%) SQL
3 718 (10.34%) PowerShell
4 573 (8.25%) Java
5 524 (7.54%) C#
6 377 (5.43%) JavaScript
7 277 (3.99%) Bash
8 247 (3.56%) TypeScript
9 234 (3.37%) Bicep
10 89 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.18%) T-SQL
12 74 (1.07%) Go
13 60 (0.86%) Scala
14 49 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
15 37 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 34 (0.49%) R
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 25 (0.36%) Groovy
19 22 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,737 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 1,418 (20.41%) SC Cleared
3 510 (7.34%) Degree
4 375 (5.40%) Azure Certification
5 221 (3.18%) DV Cleared
6 218 (3.14%) CISSP
7 187 (2.69%) Microsoft Certification
8 178 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
9 173 (2.49%) AWS Certification
10 170 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
11 148 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
12 104 (1.50%) CISM
13 85 (1.22%) CCNP
14 71 (1.02%) PMP
15 69 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 55 (0.79%) Master's Degree
18 52 (0.75%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
20 44 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 476 (6.85%) Data Quality
2 364 (5.24%) QA
3 291 (4.19%) GDPR
4 248 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 245 (3.53%) NIST
6 156 (2.25%) Accessibility
7 93 (1.34%) NCSC
8 90 (1.30%) SLA
9 67 (0.96%) PCI DSS
10 66 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.91%) WCAG
12 62 (0.89%) GRC
13 58 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 45 (0.65%) PMO
15 33 (0.48%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.33%) NIST 800
18 22 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 16 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 872 (12.55%) Active Directory
2 730 (10.51%) Docker
3 192 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 134 (1.93%) Virtual Desktop
5 127 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
6 91 (1.31%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.89%) vSphere
8 51 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.43%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 16 (0.23%) Postfix
13 12 (0.17%) IAG
14 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.10%) Varnish
16 6 (0.086%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.072%) RACF
17 5 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.058%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,113 (16.02%) Terraform
2 985 (14.18%) Kubernetes
3 377 (5.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 343 (4.94%) Ansible
5 205 (2.95%) Grafana
6 172 (2.48%) Prometheus
7 143 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
8 96 (1.38%) SCCM
9 61 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 46 (0.66%) Progress Chef
11 43 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
12 41 (0.59%) Argo
12 41 (0.59%) Puppet
13 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 26 (0.37%) Istio
15 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 18 (0.26%) HAProxy
16 18 (0.26%) Packer
17 16 (0.23%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.22%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,284 (32.88%) Microsoft
2 622 (8.95%) Databricks
3 348 (5.01%) ServiceNow
4 270 (3.89%) VMware
5 268 (3.86%) Oracle
6 261 (3.76%) Google
7 199 (2.86%) SAP
8 195 (2.81%) Cisco
9 170 (2.45%) OpenAI
10 153 (2.20%) Splunk
11 134 (1.93%) Salesforce
12 130 (1.87%) CyberArk
13 129 (1.86%) Palo Alto
14 120 (1.73%) Foundry
15 89 (1.28%) Dynatrace
16 84 (1.21%) Zscaler
17 81 (1.17%) Okta
18 65 (0.94%) Citrix
18 65 (0.94%) Fortinet
19 64 (0.92%) Informatica