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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,061 3,839 4,956
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.40% 15.71% 13.27%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.80% 41.83% 41.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,377 2,728 3,655
10th Percentile £358 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.20%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £646
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 27 50
10th Percentile £25.47 £23.72 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.78 £27.73 £22.53
Median hourly rate £57.50 £60.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.96% +72.86% -33.87%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.72 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £88.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% - -35.19%

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 14,161 9,178 11,952
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.99% 37.55% 32.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,773 6,433 8,595
10th Percentile £313 £313 £281
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £522 £525
% change year-on-year -4.12% -0.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 432 188 321
10th Percentile £16.03 £15.24 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.17 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £45.23 £26.81 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +68.69% +29.09% -24.47%
75th Percentile £68.75 £43.10 £32.50
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.15 £59.95
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £27.88 £21.00
% change year-on-year +53.10% +32.76% -30.29%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 3,255 £537 -2.36% 971
North of England +3 833 £500 +5.26% 554
South East 0 770 £500 -4.76% 645
Midlands -3 500 £488 -4.41% 308
North West +2 449 £500 - 282
South West +6 367 £500 -4.76% 252
West Midlands 0 367 £500 -4.76% 185
Yorkshire 0 341 £500 +17.65% 193
East of England +8 154 £550 -8.33% 210
East Midlands +1 124 £449 -5.58% 122
North East -5 50 £525 +3.70% 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
1 283 (4.67%) SharePoint
2 174 (2.87%) Microsoft Exchange
3 173 (2.85%) Apache Spark
4 169 (2.79%) Confluence
5 97 (1.60%) Apache
6 86 (1.42%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) SAS
8 19 (0.31%) IIS
9 15 (0.25%) Appian
10 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
10 14 (0.23%) Camunda
11 12 (0.20%) CMS
11 12 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.18%) Mendix
13 9 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 8 (0.13%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 5 (0.082%) BizTalk Server
16 5 (0.082%) nginx
Applications
1 105 (1.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.082%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.082%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.066%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.066%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.066%) Weka
11 3 (0.049%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) Revit
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 104 (1.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.18%) Maximo
3 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.15%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.082%) Dynamics AX
8 5 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.082%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.066%) Cloudability
9 4 (0.066%) Elite 3E
9 4 (0.066%) Endur
9 4 (0.066%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.066%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.066%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
10 3 (0.049%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 3 (0.049%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,103 (34.70%) AWS
2 1,254 (20.69%) Azure DevOps
3 1,160 (19.14%) GCP
4 796 (13.13%) Power Platform
5 771 (12.72%) Entra ID
6 661 (10.91%) Microsoft 365
7 579 (9.55%) GitHub
8 460 (7.59%) Azure Data Factory
9 332 (5.48%) GitHub Actions
10 331 (5.46%) Serverless
11 300 (4.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 252 (4.16%) SaaS
13 237 (3.91%) Dynamics 365
14 230 (3.79%) Azure AKS
15 217 (3.58%) Azure Monitor
16 210 (3.46%) Power Automate
17 209 (3.45%) PaaS
18 191 (3.15%) Azure Functions
19 186 (3.07%) Azure Logic Apps
20 171 (2.82%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 382 (6.30%) Firewall
2 266 (4.39%) DNS
3 235 (3.88%) VPN
4 205 (3.38%) Network Security
5 155 (2.56%) WAN
6 151 (2.49%) DHCP
7 119 (1.96%) LAN
8 92 (1.52%) TCP/IP
9 75 (1.24%) VLAN
10 73 (1.20%) SD-WAN
11 71 (1.17%) Wi-Fi
12 65 (1.07%) Kerberos
13 49 (0.81%) BGP
14 43 (0.71%) OSPF
15 39 (0.64%) Wireless
16 38 (0.63%) SAN
17 36 (0.59%) SSL
18 35 (0.58%) HTTP
19 32 (0.53%) Internet
20 28 (0.46%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 553 (9.12%) Power BI
2 366 (6.04%) SQL Server
3 334 (5.51%) Data Warehouse
4 291 (4.80%) Data Lake
5 215 (3.55%) PostgreSQL
6 214 (3.53%) Azure SQL Database
7 182 (3.00%) NoSQL
8 148 (2.44%) Metadata
9 134 (2.21%) Delta Lake
10 99 (1.63%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 84 (1.39%) Big Data
13 78 (1.29%) MongoDB
13 78 (1.29%) Tableau
14 61 (1.01%) Oracle Database
15 58 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
16 54 (0.89%) BigQuery
17 47 (0.78%) Star Schema
18 46 (0.76%) MySQL
19 45 (0.74%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 447 (7.38%) Git
2 423 (6.98%) JIRA
3 300 (4.95%) Jenkins
4 218 (3.60%) GitLab
5 104 (1.72%) Selenium
6 68 (1.12%) Postman
7 58 (0.96%) JUnit
8 56 (0.92%) Cucumber
9 48 (0.79%) MLflow
10 47 (0.78%) JMeter
11 43 (0.71%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.58%) Cypress.io
13 34 (0.56%) SonarQube
14 33 (0.54%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.54%) Oracle APEX
15 28 (0.46%) TestRail
16 25 (0.41%) Visual Studio
17 23 (0.38%) Gatling
17 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
18 21 (0.35%) Mockito
General
1 1,649 (27.21%) Social Skills
2 1,132 (18.68%) Finance
3 636 (10.49%) Public Sector
4 609 (10.05%) Analytical Skills
5 353 (5.82%) Banking
6 194 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
7 139 (2.29%) Legal
8 98 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 87 (1.44%) Retail
10 82 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
11 77 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
12 74 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
13 65 (1.07%) Financial Institution
14 64 (1.06%) Law
14 64 (1.06%) Marketing
15 60 (0.99%) Investment Banking
16 58 (0.96%) Telecoms
17 57 (0.94%) Front Office
18 44 (0.73%) Local Government
19 35 (0.58%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,004 (16.56%) Architect
2 788 (13.00%) Developer
3 732 (12.08%) Senior
4 560 (9.24%) Azure Engineer
5 520 (8.58%) Data Engineer
6 458 (7.56%) Lead
7 383 (6.32%) Analyst
8 299 (4.93%) DevOps Engineer
9 260 (4.29%) Solutions Architect
10 247 (4.08%) Consultant
11 183 (3.02%) Cloud Engineer
12 175 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 154 (2.54%) Platform Engineer
14 153 (2.52%) Azure Architect
15 151 (2.49%) Security Engineer
16 135 (2.23%) Data Architect
16 135 (2.23%) Senior Developer
17 130 (2.14%) Technical Architect
18 128 (2.11%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 126 (2.08%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 456 (7.52%) .NET
2 390 (6.43%) REST
3 264 (4.36%) React
4 246 (4.06%) Kafka
5 232 (3.83%) PySpark
6 214 (3.53%) Node.js
7 190 (3.13%) RESTful
8 181 (2.99%) Spring
9 179 (2.95%) OAuth
10 164 (2.71%) AngularJS
11 149 (2.46%) LDAP
12 144 (2.38%) Spring Boot
13 122 (2.01%) JSON
14 121 (2.00%) HTML
14 121 (2.00%) Middleware
15 119 (1.96%) SAML
16 115 (1.90%) SOAP
17 103 (1.70%) YAML
18 102 (1.68%) CSS
18 102 (1.68%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 570 (9.40%) Cloud Native
2 239 (3.94%) Onboarding
3 215 (3.55%) Product Ownership
4 172 (2.84%) Hybrid Cloud
5 158 (2.61%) Enterprise Software
6 152 (2.51%) Security Posture
7 147 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
8 140 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
9 139 (2.29%) Data Centre
10 134 (2.21%) Public Cloud
11 107 (1.77%) AI Agents
12 82 (1.35%) Data Structures
12 82 (1.35%) Replication
13 68 (1.12%) Management Information System
14 64 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
15 60 (0.99%) PKI
16 57 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
17 48 (0.79%) Low-Code
18 46 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
19 45 (0.74%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 670 (11.05%) Windows
2 305 (5.03%) Linux
3 207 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 114 (1.88%) Windows 10
5 62 (1.02%) VMS
6 56 (0.92%) Unix
7 52 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 45 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.64%) Apple iOS
10 31 (0.51%) Android
11 19 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
11 19 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.12%) CentOS
17 5 (0.082%) AIX
17 5 (0.082%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.082%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,256 (37.22%) DevOps
2 1,849 (30.51%) CI/CD
3 1,420 (23.43%) Agile
4 962 (15.87%) Problem-Solving
5 924 (15.25%) Analytics
6 860 (14.19%) AI
7 838 (13.83%) Infrastructure as Code
8 811 (13.38%) Migration
9 700 (11.55%) Data Modelling
10 616 (10.16%) Business Intelligence
11 610 (10.06%) Stakeholder Management
12 595 (9.82%) Continuous Improvement
13 583 (9.62%) Data Pipeline
14 573 (9.45%) ETL
15 566 (9.34%) Containerisation
16 541 (8.93%) Microservices
17 537 (8.86%) Data Engineering
18 512 (8.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 492 (8.12%) Roadmaps
20 473 (7.80%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,535 (25.33%) Python
2 1,372 (22.64%) SQL
3 654 (10.79%) PowerShell
4 515 (8.50%) C#
5 514 (8.48%) Java
6 401 (6.62%) JavaScript
7 234 (3.86%) TypeScript
8 218 (3.60%) Bash
9 195 (3.22%) Bicep
10 100 (1.65%) Scala
11 75 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 74 (1.22%) Go
13 73 (1.20%) T-SQL
14 72 (1.19%) PL/SQL
15 64 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.68%) R
17 35 (0.58%) Shell Script
18 21 (0.35%) C++
19 20 (0.33%) PHP
20 16 (0.26%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,520 (25.08%) Security Cleared
2 1,261 (20.81%) SC Cleared
3 451 (7.44%) Degree
4 352 (5.81%) Azure Certification
5 190 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
6 167 (2.76%) CISSP
7 142 (2.34%) Microsoft Certification
8 129 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
9 120 (1.98%) DV Cleared
10 117 (1.93%) AWS Certification
11 99 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
12 95 (1.57%) CISM
13 68 (1.12%) CCNP
14 59 (0.97%) Master's Degree
15 58 (0.96%) PMP
16 55 (0.91%) PMI Certification
16 55 (0.91%) TOGAF Certification
17 50 (0.82%) ISTQB
18 44 (0.73%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 35 (0.58%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 441 (7.28%) Data Quality
2 345 (5.69%) GDPR
3 323 (5.33%) QA
4 253 (4.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 229 (3.78%) NIST
6 91 (1.50%) Accessibility
7 84 (1.39%) NCSC
8 82 (1.35%) PCI DSS
9 58 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 54 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.89%) SLA
11 47 (0.78%) PMO
12 38 (0.63%) GRC
13 29 (0.48%) WCAG
14 28 (0.46%) HIPAA
15 24 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
17 19 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 18 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 18 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 798 (13.17%) Active Directory
2 683 (11.27%) Docker
3 181 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
5 92 (1.52%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 65 (1.07%) vSphere
8 35 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 23 (0.38%) Firmware
11 17 (0.28%) NFS
12 11 (0.18%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.099%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.099%) RACF
14 6 (0.099%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.099%) Varnish
15 5 (0.082%) HDFS
15 5 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.082%) Snort
Systems Management
1 953 (15.72%) Terraform
2 893 (14.73%) Kubernetes
3 333 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 256 (4.22%) Ansible
5 159 (2.62%) Grafana
6 136 (2.24%) Single Sign-On
7 130 (2.14%) Prometheus
8 106 (1.75%) SCCM
9 69 (1.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.58%) Istio
11 34 (0.56%) Argo
12 31 (0.51%) Puppet
13 26 (0.43%) Progress Chef
14 25 (0.41%) vCenter Server
15 23 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
16 20 (0.33%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
18 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
18 16 (0.26%) Nmap
18 16 (0.26%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,979 (32.65%) Microsoft
2 630 (10.39%) Databricks
3 290 (4.78%) Oracle
4 280 (4.62%) Google
5 268 (4.42%) ServiceNow
6 252 (4.16%) VMware
7 177 (2.92%) SAP
8 162 (2.67%) Cisco
8 162 (2.67%) OpenAI
9 137 (2.26%) Splunk
10 132 (2.18%) CyberArk
11 105 (1.73%) Foundry
12 83 (1.37%) Palo Alto
13 81 (1.34%) Okta
13 81 (1.34%) Salesforce
14 69 (1.14%) IBM
15 67 (1.11%) BeyondTrust
16 66 (1.09%) Citrix
17 60 (0.99%) Informatica
18 59 (0.97%) Red Hat