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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,236 3,730 4,931
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.17% 15.36% 13.55%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.35% 41.32% 42.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,475 2,633 3,628
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £448
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 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% -44.44%
75th Percentile £60.00 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £78.05 £93.61 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%

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 14,385 9,028 11,691
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.99% 37.18% 32.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,853 6,245 8,435
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £743
UK median daily rate £505 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 467 203 327
10th Percentile £15.40 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.90 £17.96 £15.87
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +54.90% +19.33% -35.73%
75th Percentile £65.00 £37.63 £35.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £72.25 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +34.55% +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 20 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 20 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 20 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 3,338 £540 -1.82% 957
North of England +3 883 £500 +5.26% 544
South East +3 817 £500 -2.44% 629
Midlands -5 487 £491 -1.75% 273
North West +3 449 £500 +1.83% 300
South West +6 385 £525 - 259
Yorkshire +6 368 £500 +13.06% 153
West Midlands -1 351 £496 -5.48% 168
East of England +6 145 £550 -6.78% 169
East Midlands +4 126 £463 - 104
North East -1 75 £525 +6.33% 93
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
1 300 (4.81%) SharePoint
2 177 (2.84%) Apache Spark
3 175 (2.81%) Confluence
4 168 (2.69%) Microsoft Exchange
5 92 (1.48%) Apache
6 85 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.37%) IIS
8 16 (0.26%) SAS
9 14 (0.22%) CMS
10 13 (0.21%) Mendix
11 12 (0.19%) Appian
11 12 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 12 (0.19%) Camunda
11 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
12 10 (0.16%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.096%) Umbraco
15 5 (0.080%) Jupyter
15 5 (0.080%) WebLogic
Applications
1 84 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 35 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.080%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.064%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.064%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.064%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.048%) Revit
10 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.016%) InDesign
11 1 (0.016%) Notion
11 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 89 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.096%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.080%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.080%) Shopify
9 5 (0.080%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.064%) Endur
10 4 (0.064%) Magento
10 4 (0.064%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.064%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.064%) SAP BPC
11 3 (0.048%) Findur
Cloud Services
1 2,137 (34.27%) AWS
2 1,265 (20.29%) Azure DevOps
3 1,113 (17.85%) GCP
4 796 (12.76%) Power Platform
5 767 (12.30%) Entra ID
6 651 (10.44%) Microsoft 365
7 568 (9.11%) GitHub
8 455 (7.30%) Azure Data Factory
9 322 (5.16%) GitHub Actions
10 312 (5.00%) Serverless
11 297 (4.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 247 (3.96%) SaaS
13 232 (3.72%) Azure AKS
14 219 (3.51%) Dynamics 365
15 214 (3.43%) Power Automate
16 208 (3.34%) PaaS
17 200 (3.21%) Azure Monitor
18 173 (2.77%) Azure Functions
18 173 (2.77%) PowerApps
19 172 (2.76%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 380 (6.09%) Firewall
2 273 (4.38%) DNS
3 227 (3.64%) VPN
4 208 (3.34%) Network Security
5 172 (2.76%) WAN
6 149 (2.39%) DHCP
7 116 (1.86%) LAN
8 88 (1.41%) SD-WAN
8 88 (1.41%) TCP/IP
9 72 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
10 70 (1.12%) BGP
10 70 (1.12%) VLAN
11 66 (1.06%) Kerberos
12 60 (0.96%) OSPF
13 45 (0.72%) SAN
14 38 (0.61%) SSL
14 38 (0.61%) Wireless
15 35 (0.56%) VXLAN
16 29 (0.47%) HTTP
17 28 (0.45%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 548 (8.79%) Power BI
2 376 (6.03%) SQL Server
3 322 (5.16%) Data Warehouse
4 303 (4.86%) Data Lake
5 207 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
6 194 (3.11%) Azure SQL Database
7 174 (2.79%) NoSQL
8 145 (2.33%) Metadata
9 139 (2.23%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.54%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.41%) Big Data
11 88 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 75 (1.20%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.17%) Tableau
14 63 (1.01%) Oracle Database
15 60 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
16 56 (0.90%) BigQuery
17 46 (0.74%) Spark SQL
17 46 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 41 (0.66%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 456 (7.31%) Git
2 433 (6.94%) JIRA
3 308 (4.94%) Jenkins
4 236 (3.78%) GitLab
5 94 (1.51%) Selenium
6 61 (0.98%) Postman
7 50 (0.80%) Cucumber
7 50 (0.80%) MLflow
8 48 (0.77%) JMeter
9 47 (0.75%) JUnit
10 42 (0.67%) REST Assured
11 38 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 30 (0.48%) Artifactory
12 30 (0.48%) Cypress.io
13 27 (0.43%) Maven
14 25 (0.40%) Visual Studio
15 24 (0.38%) Gatling
15 24 (0.38%) WebDriver
16 23 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.35%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,573 (25.22%) Social Skills
2 1,199 (19.23%) Finance
3 626 (10.04%) Public Sector
4 568 (9.11%) Analytical Skills
5 362 (5.81%) Banking
6 168 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 146 (2.34%) Legal
8 101 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 97 (1.56%) Retail
10 88 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
11 72 (1.15%) Financial Institution
12 65 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
13 64 (1.03%) Investment Banking
14 60 (0.96%) Front Office
14 60 (0.96%) Marketing
14 60 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
15 56 (0.90%) Law
16 50 (0.80%) Telecoms
17 40 (0.64%) Military
18 37 (0.59%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,056 (16.93%) Architect
2 753 (12.08%) Senior
3 750 (12.03%) Developer
4 580 (9.30%) Azure Engineer
5 532 (8.53%) Data Engineer
6 451 (7.23%) Lead
7 384 (6.16%) Analyst
8 326 (5.23%) DevOps Engineer
9 286 (4.59%) Solutions Architect
10 261 (4.19%) Consultant
11 212 (3.40%) Cloud Engineer
12 208 (3.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 168 (2.69%) Azure Architect
14 166 (2.66%) Security Engineer
15 155 (2.49%) Data Architect
16 148 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
17 139 (2.23%) Technical Architect
18 137 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 135 (2.16%) Project Manager
20 131 (2.10%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 470 (7.54%) .NET
2 403 (6.46%) REST
3 256 (4.11%) React
4 238 (3.82%) Kafka
5 232 (3.72%) PySpark
6 185 (2.97%) Node.js
7 182 (2.92%) RESTful
8 170 (2.73%) OAuth
9 159 (2.55%) LDAP
9 159 (2.55%) Spring
10 155 (2.49%) AngularJS
11 128 (2.05%) Spring Boot
12 125 (2.00%) Middleware
13 123 (1.97%) JSON
14 122 (1.96%) SOAP
15 114 (1.83%) SAML
16 109 (1.75%) OpenID
17 107 (1.72%) HTML
18 98 (1.57%) YAML
19 94 (1.51%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 605 (9.70%) Cloud Native
2 251 (4.03%) Onboarding
3 214 (3.43%) Product Ownership
4 183 (2.93%) Hybrid Cloud
5 177 (2.84%) Data Centre
6 156 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
7 149 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
8 145 (2.33%) Security Posture
9 139 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
10 129 (2.07%) Public Cloud
11 121 (1.94%) AI Agents
12 86 (1.38%) Data Structures
13 84 (1.35%) Replication
14 70 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
15 66 (1.06%) Management Information System
16 57 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
17 56 (0.90%) PKI
18 54 (0.87%) Low-Code
19 53 (0.85%) Self-Motivation
20 51 (0.82%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 703 (11.27%) Windows
2 313 (5.02%) Linux
3 209 (3.35%) Windows Server
4 114 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.06%) Unix
6 61 (0.98%) Mac OS
7 60 (0.96%) Apple iOS
8 55 (0.88%) VMS
9 47 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 40 (0.64%) Android
11 24 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 9 (0.14%) Debian
16 8 (0.13%) CentOS
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.096%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.096%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,323 (37.25%) DevOps
2 1,919 (30.77%) CI/CD
3 1,434 (23.00%) Agile
4 918 (14.72%) Analytics
5 890 (14.27%) Problem-Solving
6 889 (14.26%) AI
7 886 (14.21%) Infrastructure as Code
8 871 (13.97%) Migration
9 723 (11.59%) Data Modelling
10 635 (10.18%) Stakeholder Management
11 622 (9.97%) Data Pipeline
12 609 (9.77%) Business Intelligence
13 602 (9.65%) ETL
14 589 (9.45%) Continuous Improvement
15 569 (9.12%) Containerisation
16 540 (8.66%) Roadmaps
17 538 (8.63%) Microservices
18 533 (8.55%) Data Engineering
19 495 (7.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 450 (7.22%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,492 (23.93%) Python
2 1,341 (21.50%) SQL
3 645 (10.34%) PowerShell
4 516 (8.27%) C#
5 505 (8.10%) Java
6 360 (5.77%) JavaScript
7 215 (3.45%) Bash
8 208 (3.34%) TypeScript
9 196 (3.14%) Bicep
10 92 (1.48%) Scala
11 85 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 79 (1.27%) T-SQL
13 70 (1.12%) Go
14 45 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.71%) PL/SQL
16 37 (0.59%) R
17 34 (0.55%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.35%) C++
19 21 (0.34%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,548 (24.82%) Security Cleared
2 1,300 (20.85%) SC Cleared
3 448 (7.18%) Degree
4 346 (5.55%) Azure Certification
5 176 (2.82%) CISSP
6 168 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
7 148 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
8 141 (2.26%) DV Cleared
9 138 (2.21%) Microsoft Certification
10 120 (1.92%) AWS Certification
11 105 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
12 100 (1.60%) CISM
13 71 (1.14%) CCNP
14 68 (1.09%) PMP
15 63 (1.01%) PMI Certification
16 54 (0.87%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 52 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 48 (0.77%) TOGAF Certification
19 47 (0.75%) ISTQB
20 38 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (7.18%) Data Quality
2 331 (5.31%) QA
3 306 (4.91%) GDPR
4 246 (3.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 230 (3.69%) NIST
6 102 (1.64%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.30%) NCSC
8 77 (1.23%) PCI DSS
9 66 (1.06%) SLA
10 61 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 61 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 49 (0.79%) PMO
12 47 (0.75%) GRC
13 38 (0.61%) WCAG
14 35 (0.56%) HIPAA
15 24 (0.38%) NIST 800
16 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 17 (0.27%) ISO 20022
17 17 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 794 (12.73%) Active Directory
2 671 (10.76%) Docker
3 181 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 112 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
5 105 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 88 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 57 (0.91%) vSphere
8 38 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.42%) Firmware
10 21 (0.34%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.30%) NFS
12 13 (0.21%) Postfix
13 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.096%) RACF
16 5 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.080%) KVM
16 5 (0.080%) Snort
16 5 (0.080%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.064%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 973 (15.60%) Terraform
2 892 (14.30%) Kubernetes
3 328 (5.26%) Microsoft Intune
4 277 (4.44%) Ansible
5 167 (2.68%) Grafana
6 142 (2.28%) Prometheus
7 132 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 98 (1.57%) SCCM
9 68 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 34 (0.55%) Istio
11 33 (0.53%) Puppet
12 31 (0.50%) Argo
13 29 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
14 27 (0.43%) Progress Chef
15 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
16 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.27%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.24%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.24%) linkerd
19 14 (0.22%) Nmap
Vendors
1 2,026 (32.49%) Microsoft
2 635 (10.18%) Databricks
3 286 (4.59%) ServiceNow
4 261 (4.19%) Oracle
5 250 (4.01%) VMware
6 235 (3.77%) Google
7 187 (3.00%) SAP
8 165 (2.65%) Cisco
9 159 (2.55%) OpenAI
10 139 (2.23%) Splunk
11 130 (2.08%) CyberArk
12 113 (1.81%) Palo Alto
13 99 (1.59%) Foundry
14 93 (1.49%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.27%) Okta
16 71 (1.14%) Dynatrace
17 68 (1.09%) Citrix
18 64 (1.03%) Zscaler
19 63 (1.01%) BeyondTrust
20 59 (0.95%) Informatica