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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,851 4,013 5,202
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.44% 15.10% 13.99%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.18% 40.14% 42.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,813 2,778 3,810
10th Percentile £367 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £423 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £525
% change year-on-year +0.43% -0.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 35 48
10th Percentile £23.00 £25.40 £17.80
25th Percentile £38.00 £28.20 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £42.34
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +6.28% -29.84%
75th Percentile £78.81 £76.72 £61.60
90th Percentile £101.01 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -0.86% +25.60% -23.73%

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 15,508 9,997 12,156
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.95% 37.62% 32.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,421 6,737 8,671
10th Percentile £325 £313 £308
25th Percentile £415 £410 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 557 258 330
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £23.00 £17.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.06% +14.32% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £39.69 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.10 £67.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £27.63 £22.00
% change year-on-year +35.72% +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 7 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 7 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 7 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 3,595 £550 - 1,270
North of England +6 1,011 £500 +5.26% 709
South East +2 849 £520 +4.00% 797
Midlands +3 603 £500 +1.63% 395
North West +8 527 £500 - 376
West Midlands +1 450 £500 -4.76% 208
South West +6 433 £539 +7.75% 314
Yorkshire +3 403 £505 +6.37% 233
East of England +3 181 £550 - 263
East Midlands +4 142 £500 +8.11% 186
North East +1 94 £525 +5.00% 110
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
1 341 (4.98%) SharePoint
2 213 (3.11%) Confluence
3 175 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 167 (2.44%) Apache Spark
5 117 (1.71%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.59%) Apache
7 37 (0.54%) SAS
8 25 (0.36%) IIS
9 19 (0.28%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 10 (0.15%) Camunda
12 8 (0.12%) Umbraco
13 7 (0.10%) Appian
13 7 (0.10%) Mendix
13 7 (0.10%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.088%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.088%) Documentum
14 6 (0.088%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 100 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 63 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
2 63 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
3 35 (0.51%) MS Visio
4 27 (0.39%) Chatbot
5 26 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.20%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
8 8 (0.12%) Revit
9 7 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.073%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.073%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.058%) Notion
11 4 (0.058%) Trello
12 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.015%) Houdini
13 1 (0.015%) InDesign
13 1 (0.015%) Sketch
13 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 93 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.10%) Maximo
7 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.088%) Endur
8 6 (0.088%) Magento
8 6 (0.088%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.088%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.088%) Shopify
8 6 (0.088%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.073%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.058%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.058%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.058%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.058%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,427 (35.43%) AWS
2 1,381 (20.16%) Azure DevOps
3 1,146 (16.73%) GCP
4 889 (12.98%) Entra ID
5 864 (12.61%) Power Platform
6 699 (10.20%) Microsoft 365
7 614 (8.96%) GitHub
8 418 (6.10%) Azure Data Factory
9 373 (5.44%) GitHub Actions
10 314 (4.58%) Serverless
11 286 (4.17%) SaaS
12 282 (4.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 247 (3.61%) Azure AKS
14 229 (3.34%) Power Automate
15 226 (3.30%) Azure Monitor
16 219 (3.20%) PaaS
17 209 (3.05%) Dynamics 365
18 203 (2.96%) Snowflake
19 201 (2.93%) PowerApps
20 187 (2.73%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 427 (6.23%) Firewall
2 326 (4.76%) DNS
3 261 (3.81%) VPN
4 231 (3.37%) Network Security
5 191 (2.79%) WAN
6 172 (2.51%) DHCP
7 121 (1.77%) LAN
8 115 (1.68%) TCP/IP
9 102 (1.49%) BGP
10 100 (1.46%) SD-WAN
11 80 (1.17%) OSPF
12 73 (1.07%) VLAN
13 69 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.83%) Kerberos
15 56 (0.82%) SSL
16 52 (0.76%) SAN
17 44 (0.64%) Wireless
18 42 (0.61%) IPsec
18 42 (0.61%) VXLAN
19 38 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 601 (8.77%) Power BI
2 412 (6.01%) SQL Server
3 340 (4.96%) Data Warehouse
4 301 (4.39%) Data Lake
5 242 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
6 177 (2.58%) NoSQL
7 173 (2.53%) Azure SQL Database
8 162 (2.36%) Metadata
9 132 (1.93%) Delta Lake
10 114 (1.66%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.34%) Big Data
12 76 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.09%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.07%) Tableau
15 64 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.83%) BigQuery
17 55 (0.80%) Oracle Database
18 51 (0.74%) MySQL
19 47 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
20 46 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 492 (7.18%) JIRA
2 490 (7.15%) Git
3 325 (4.74%) Jenkins
4 250 (3.65%) GitLab
5 102 (1.49%) Selenium
6 58 (0.85%) Postman
7 57 (0.83%) JMeter
8 55 (0.80%) JUnit
9 51 (0.74%) Cucumber
10 44 (0.64%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 39 (0.57%) MLflow
13 35 (0.51%) Visual Studio
13 35 (0.51%) WebDriver
14 33 (0.48%) Cypress.io
15 29 (0.42%) Maven
16 26 (0.38%) Gatling
17 25 (0.36%) LoadRunner
17 25 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
18 22 (0.32%) Gradle
General
1 1,719 (25.09%) Social Skills
2 1,352 (19.73%) Finance
3 711 (10.38%) Public Sector
4 651 (9.50%) Analytical Skills
5 394 (5.75%) Banking
6 191 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 163 (2.38%) Legal
8 157 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 157 (2.29%) Retail
9 92 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
10 74 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
11 68 (0.99%) Investment Banking
12 67 (0.98%) Front Office
13 63 (0.92%) Financial Institution
13 63 (0.92%) Law
13 63 (0.92%) Telecoms
14 59 (0.86%) Marketing
15 57 (0.83%) Manufacturing
16 53 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
17 46 (0.67%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,228 (17.92%) Architect
2 854 (12.47%) Senior
3 819 (11.95%) Developer
4 594 (8.67%) Azure Engineer
5 543 (7.93%) Data Engineer
6 533 (7.78%) Lead
7 417 (6.09%) Analyst
8 364 (5.31%) Solutions Architect
9 323 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
10 285 (4.16%) Consultant
11 276 (4.03%) Cloud Engineer
12 239 (3.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 197 (2.88%) Data Architect
14 188 (2.74%) Azure Architect
15 175 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
16 170 (2.48%) Security Engineer
17 164 (2.39%) Technical Architect
18 156 (2.28%) Business Analyst
19 145 (2.12%) Project Manager
19 145 (2.12%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 520 (7.59%) .NET
2 454 (6.63%) REST
3 268 (3.91%) React
4 259 (3.78%) Kafka
5 221 (3.23%) PySpark
6 214 (3.12%) RESTful
7 207 (3.02%) OAuth
8 174 (2.54%) Spring
9 171 (2.50%) Node.js
10 159 (2.32%) AngularJS
11 144 (2.10%) Spring Boot
12 142 (2.07%) JSON
13 140 (2.04%) SAML
14 133 (1.94%) LDAP
15 126 (1.84%) OpenID
16 119 (1.74%) HTML
17 115 (1.68%) .NET Framework
18 111 (1.62%) Middleware
19 109 (1.59%) SOAP
20 106 (1.55%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 731 (10.67%) Cloud Native
2 298 (4.35%) Onboarding
3 260 (3.80%) Product Ownership
4 215 (3.14%) Data Centre
4 215 (3.14%) Distributed Systems
5 209 (3.05%) Hybrid Cloud
6 191 (2.79%) Legacy Systems
7 155 (2.26%) AI Agents
8 145 (2.12%) Security Posture
9 137 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
10 129 (1.88%) Public Cloud
11 102 (1.49%) Data Structures
12 93 (1.36%) Replication
13 92 (1.34%) Management Information System
14 87 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
15 76 (1.11%) Enterprise Cloud
15 76 (1.11%) PKI
16 71 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
17 64 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
18 56 (0.82%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 816 (11.91%) Windows
2 353 (5.15%) Linux
3 260 (3.80%) Windows Server
4 103 (1.50%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.08%) Unix
6 65 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 64 (0.93%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.86%) Apple iOS
9 58 (0.85%) Android
10 44 (0.64%) VMS
11 36 (0.53%) Ubuntu
12 25 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
14 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
16 11 (0.16%) CentOS
17 10 (0.15%) Debian
18 6 (0.088%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.088%) Rocky
18 6 (0.088%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,487 (36.30%) DevOps
2 2,114 (30.86%) CI/CD
3 1,649 (24.07%) Agile
4 1,086 (15.85%) AI
5 1,029 (15.02%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,006 (14.68%) Analytics
7 987 (14.41%) Migration
8 939 (13.71%) Problem-Solving
9 839 (12.25%) Stakeholder Management
10 774 (11.30%) Data Modelling
11 692 (10.10%) Continuous Improvement
12 685 (10.00%) Data Pipeline
13 673 (9.82%) Roadmaps
14 646 (9.43%) Business Intelligence
15 623 (9.09%) Containerisation
16 607 (8.86%) ETL
17 593 (8.66%) Microservices
18 586 (8.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 581 (8.48%) Data Engineering
20 528 (7.71%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,624 (23.70%) Python
2 1,408 (20.55%) SQL
3 690 (10.07%) PowerShell
4 567 (8.28%) Java
5 531 (7.75%) C#
6 372 (5.43%) JavaScript
7 253 (3.69%) Bash
8 250 (3.65%) TypeScript
9 234 (3.42%) Bicep
10 88 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 78 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 76 (1.11%) Go
13 70 (1.02%) Scala
14 44 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.53%) R
15 36 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 30 (0.44%) Kotlin
17 28 (0.41%) PL/SQL
18 23 (0.34%) Groovy
19 21 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,689 (24.65%) Security Cleared
2 1,385 (20.22%) SC Cleared
3 505 (7.37%) Degree
4 362 (5.28%) Azure Certification
5 219 (3.20%) CISSP
6 193 (2.82%) DV Cleared
7 177 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
8 176 (2.57%) Microsoft Certification
9 173 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
10 158 (2.31%) AWS Certification
11 142 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
12 105 (1.53%) CISM
13 83 (1.21%) CCNP
14 68 (0.99%) PMP
15 64 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 62 (0.90%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 48 (0.70%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 481 (7.02%) Data Quality
2 350 (5.11%) QA
3 301 (4.39%) GDPR
4 250 (3.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 240 (3.50%) NIST
6 144 (2.10%) Accessibility
7 94 (1.37%) NCSC
8 87 (1.27%) SLA
9 71 (1.04%) PCI DSS
10 69 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 58 (0.85%) WCAG
13 56 (0.82%) GRC
14 39 (0.57%) PMO
15 35 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.35%) SOC 2
18 23 (0.34%) NIST 800
19 16 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 16 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 862 (12.58%) Active Directory
2 714 (10.42%) Docker
3 192 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 127 (1.85%) Virtual Desktop
5 125 (1.82%) Virtual Machines
6 89 (1.30%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.86%) vSphere
8 51 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.41%) Firmware
11 23 (0.34%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.13%) IAG
15 8 (0.12%) Varnish
16 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.088%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.073%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
18 5 (0.073%) RACF
18 5 (0.073%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,104 (16.11%) Terraform
2 968 (14.13%) Kubernetes
3 382 (5.58%) Microsoft Intune
4 317 (4.63%) Ansible
5 200 (2.92%) Grafana
6 165 (2.41%) Prometheus
7 147 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
8 94 (1.37%) SCCM
9 68 (0.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 42 (0.61%) Jamf Pro
10 42 (0.61%) Progress Chef
11 41 (0.60%) Argo
12 39 (0.57%) Puppet
13 33 (0.48%) FortiGate
14 28 (0.41%) Istio
15 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.28%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.23%) HP ALM
17 16 (0.23%) Packer
18 13 (0.19%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,231 (32.56%) Microsoft
2 644 (9.40%) Databricks
3 342 (4.99%) ServiceNow
4 270 (3.94%) Oracle
5 264 (3.85%) VMware
6 250 (3.65%) Google
7 197 (2.88%) SAP
8 188 (2.74%) Cisco
9 167 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 142 (2.07%) Splunk
11 128 (1.87%) Palo Alto
11 128 (1.87%) Salesforce
12 121 (1.77%) CyberArk
13 118 (1.72%) Foundry
14 91 (1.33%) Okta
15 89 (1.30%) Dynatrace
16 78 (1.14%) Zscaler
17 69 (1.01%) Informatica
18 64 (0.93%) Citrix
19 63 (0.92%) Fortinet