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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,668 3,800 5,116
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.35% 15.17% 13.69%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.84% 40.22% 42.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,724 2,651 3,760
10th Percentile £366 £350 £360
25th Percentile £429 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year - -3.23% -3.04%
75th Percentile £630 £639 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 154 30 50
10th Percentile £25.38 £24.14 £17.80
25th Percentile £47.91 £27.80 £22.91
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +17.62% -41.67%
75th Percentile £78.94 £76.96 £61.19
90th Percentile £102.00 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £36.75
% change year-on-year +27.78% +22.45% -40.58%

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 15,211 9,449 12,035
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.01% 37.73% 32.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,308 6,418 8,595
10th Percentile £325 £310 £306
25th Percentile £413 £413 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 541 239 338
10th Percentile £16.62 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.16 £17.14 £16.06
Median hourly rate £42.69 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.72% +14.32% -31.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £38.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £68.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £28.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +33.93% +27.27% -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 24 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 24 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 24 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 3,524 £540 -1.74% 996
North of England +7 957 £500 +5.26% 487
South East +2 837 £511 +2.25% 611
Midlands +3 565 £500 - 274
North West +8 495 £500 - 274
South West +7 431 £525 +0.96% 244
West Midlands +1 423 £500 -4.76% 162
Yorkshire +4 381 £501 +5.37% 134
East of England +6 171 £550 -4.35% 188
East Midlands +4 132 £500 +9.59% 112
North East +5 93 £525 +5.00% 84
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
1 325 (4.87%) SharePoint
2 195 (2.92%) Confluence
3 167 (2.50%) Apache Spark
4 165 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
5 111 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
6 101 (1.51%) Apache
7 36 (0.54%) SAS
8 25 (0.37%) IIS
9 17 (0.25%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
13 9 (0.13%) Appian
13 9 (0.13%) Mendix
14 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 7 (0.10%) nginx
15 7 (0.10%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
16 5 (0.075%) Jupyter
Applications
1 95 (1.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 26 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.12%) Revit
10 7 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.075%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.060%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.060%) Notion
12 4 (0.060%) Trello
13 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.015%) InDesign
14 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.015%) Sketch
14 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 96 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.19%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Maximo
6 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.12%) Shopify
8 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.090%) Endur
9 6 (0.090%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.090%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.090%) SimCorp Dimension
9 6 (0.090%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.075%) SAP MM
11 4 (0.060%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.060%) Oracle FAH
11 4 (0.060%) Remedy AR System
11 4 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,338 (35.06%) AWS
2 1,354 (20.31%) Azure DevOps
3 1,125 (16.87%) GCP
4 857 (12.85%) Power Platform
5 850 (12.75%) Entra ID
6 669 (10.03%) Microsoft 365
7 584 (8.76%) GitHub
8 430 (6.45%) Azure Data Factory
9 349 (5.23%) GitHub Actions
10 327 (4.90%) Serverless
11 283 (4.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 273 (4.09%) SaaS
13 245 (3.67%) Azure AKS
14 224 (3.36%) Power Automate
15 217 (3.25%) Dynamics 365
16 211 (3.16%) Azure Monitor
17 208 (3.12%) PaaS
18 196 (2.94%) Snowflake
19 189 (2.83%) PowerApps
20 185 (2.77%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 410 (6.15%) Firewall
2 306 (4.59%) DNS
3 244 (3.66%) VPN
4 227 (3.40%) Network Security
5 194 (2.91%) WAN
6 163 (2.44%) DHCP
7 118 (1.77%) LAN
8 105 (1.57%) TCP/IP
9 101 (1.51%) SD-WAN
10 92 (1.38%) BGP
11 73 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
12 72 (1.08%) OSPF
13 71 (1.06%) VLAN
14 58 (0.87%) Kerberos
15 49 (0.73%) SAN
16 47 (0.70%) SSL
17 43 (0.64%) Wireless
18 42 (0.63%) VXLAN
19 37 (0.55%) Internet
20 35 (0.52%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 595 (8.92%) Power BI
2 390 (5.85%) SQL Server
3 336 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 312 (4.68%) Data Lake
5 228 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
6 185 (2.77%) Azure SQL Database
7 172 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 156 (2.34%) Metadata
9 133 (1.99%) Delta Lake
10 113 (1.69%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.32%) Big Data
12 80 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.11%) Tableau
14 71 (1.06%) MongoDB
15 63 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
16 56 (0.84%) Oracle Database
17 54 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
19 45 (0.67%) Spark SQL
19 45 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 474 (7.11%) Git
1 474 (7.11%) JIRA
2 302 (4.53%) Jenkins
3 248 (3.72%) GitLab
4 100 (1.50%) Selenium
5 58 (0.87%) Postman
6 57 (0.85%) JMeter
7 52 (0.78%) JUnit
8 51 (0.76%) Cucumber
9 41 (0.61%) REST Assured
9 41 (0.61%) SonarQube
10 39 (0.58%) MLflow
11 36 (0.54%) Visual Studio
12 35 (0.52%) WebDriver
13 30 (0.45%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.43%) Maven
15 27 (0.40%) Gatling
16 25 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
17 24 (0.36%) Gradle
18 22 (0.33%) LoadRunner
General
1 1,683 (25.24%) Social Skills
2 1,327 (19.90%) Finance
3 681 (10.21%) Public Sector
4 622 (9.33%) Analytical Skills
5 393 (5.89%) Banking
6 190 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 155 (2.32%) Legal
8 153 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 141 (2.11%) Retail
10 86 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
11 68 (1.02%) Investment Banking
12 67 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
13 65 (0.97%) Financial Institution
14 64 (0.96%) Front Office
14 64 (0.96%) Law
15 57 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
16 54 (0.81%) Telecoms
17 52 (0.78%) Manufacturing
17 52 (0.78%) Marketing
18 42 (0.63%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,182 (17.73%) Architect
2 829 (12.43%) Senior
3 796 (11.94%) Developer
4 588 (8.82%) Azure Engineer
5 525 (7.87%) Data Engineer
6 508 (7.62%) Lead
7 407 (6.10%) Analyst
8 341 (5.11%) Solutions Architect
9 327 (4.90%) DevOps Engineer
10 281 (4.21%) Consultant
11 263 (3.94%) Cloud Engineer
12 235 (3.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 184 (2.76%) Data Architect
14 181 (2.71%) Azure Architect
15 173 (2.59%) Security Engineer
16 170 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
17 155 (2.32%) Technical Architect
18 153 (2.29%) Business Analyst
19 145 (2.17%) Project Manager
20 144 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 509 (7.63%) .NET
2 443 (6.64%) REST
3 272 (4.08%) React
4 247 (3.70%) Kafka
5 228 (3.42%) PySpark
6 210 (3.15%) RESTful
7 202 (3.03%) OAuth
8 170 (2.55%) Node.js
9 169 (2.53%) Spring
10 153 (2.29%) AngularJS
11 144 (2.16%) LDAP
12 139 (2.08%) Spring Boot
13 138 (2.07%) JSON
14 135 (2.02%) SAML
15 124 (1.86%) OpenID
16 118 (1.77%) Middleware
17 116 (1.74%) HTML
18 114 (1.71%) SOAP
19 110 (1.65%) .NET Framework
20 100 (1.50%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 716 (10.74%) Cloud Native
2 286 (4.29%) Onboarding
3 255 (3.82%) Product Ownership
4 213 (3.19%) Data Centre
5 204 (3.06%) Hybrid Cloud
6 201 (3.01%) Distributed Systems
7 181 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
8 154 (2.31%) Security Posture
9 146 (2.19%) AI Agents
9 146 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
10 139 (2.08%) Public Cloud
11 103 (1.54%) Data Structures
12 87 (1.30%) Management Information System
13 85 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
13 85 (1.27%) Replication
14 71 (1.06%) Enterprise Cloud
15 70 (1.05%) PKI
16 67 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
17 61 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
18 55 (0.82%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 781 (11.71%) Windows
2 332 (4.98%) Linux
3 239 (3.58%) Windows Server
4 101 (1.51%) Windows 10
5 69 (1.03%) Unix
6 63 (0.94%) Apple iOS
7 59 (0.88%) Mac OS
7 59 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 55 (0.82%) Android
9 47 (0.70%) VMS
10 32 (0.48%) Ubuntu
11 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 6 (0.090%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.090%) Rocky
17 6 (0.090%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,435 (36.52%) DevOps
2 2,052 (30.77%) CI/CD
3 1,588 (23.82%) Agile
4 1,043 (15.64%) AI
5 991 (14.86%) Infrastructure as Code
6 981 (14.71%) Analytics
7 959 (14.38%) Migration
8 925 (13.87%) Problem-Solving
9 780 (11.70%) Stakeholder Management
10 752 (11.28%) Data Modelling
11 664 (9.96%) Continuous Improvement
12 660 (9.90%) Data Pipeline
13 643 (9.64%) Roadmaps
14 640 (9.60%) Business Intelligence
15 609 (9.13%) ETL
16 597 (8.95%) Containerisation
17 569 (8.53%) Microservices
18 568 (8.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 563 (8.44%) Data Engineering
20 503 (7.54%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,590 (23.85%) Python
2 1,386 (20.79%) SQL
3 680 (10.20%) PowerShell
4 549 (8.23%) Java
5 532 (7.98%) C#
6 372 (5.58%) JavaScript
7 249 (3.73%) TypeScript
8 226 (3.39%) Bash
9 223 (3.34%) Bicep
10 88 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 77 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.08%) Go
13 70 (1.05%) Scala
14 41 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 35 (0.52%) R
16 32 (0.48%) Shell Script
17 30 (0.45%) PL/SQL
18 27 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 22 (0.33%) C++
20 19 (0.28%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,651 (24.76%) Security Cleared
2 1,371 (20.56%) SC Cleared
3 482 (7.23%) Degree
4 363 (5.44%) Azure Certification
5 216 (3.24%) CISSP
6 181 (2.71%) DV Cleared
7 175 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
8 168 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
9 163 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
10 155 (2.32%) AWS Certification
11 125 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
12 108 (1.62%) CISM
13 75 (1.12%) CCNP
14 72 (1.08%) PMP
15 66 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 62 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 50 (0.75%) ISTQB
18 49 (0.73%) Master's Degree
19 46 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
20 41 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 477 (7.15%) Data Quality
2 341 (5.11%) QA
3 306 (4.59%) GDPR
4 254 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 238 (3.57%) NIST
6 129 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.44%) NCSC
8 84 (1.26%) SLA
9 74 (1.11%) PCI DSS
10 68 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 67 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 54 (0.81%) GRC
12 54 (0.81%) WCAG
13 37 (0.55%) PMO
14 35 (0.52%) HIPAA
15 29 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.39%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.24%) COBIT
18 16 (0.24%) PSD2
System Software
1 833 (12.49%) Active Directory
2 675 (10.12%) Docker
3 188 (2.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 126 (1.89%) Virtual Desktop
5 117 (1.75%) Virtual Machines
6 90 (1.35%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.88%) vSphere
8 51 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.43%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.42%) Firmware
11 20 (0.30%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.090%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.090%) KVM
17 5 (0.075%) IAG
17 5 (0.075%) RACF
17 5 (0.075%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,072 (16.08%) Terraform
2 929 (13.93%) Kubernetes
3 367 (5.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 305 (4.57%) Ansible
5 173 (2.59%) Grafana
6 151 (2.26%) Prometheus
7 146 (2.19%) Single Sign-On
8 91 (1.36%) SCCM
9 68 (1.02%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.58%) Progress Chef
11 37 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.54%) FortiGate
12 36 (0.54%) Puppet
13 32 (0.48%) Argo
14 28 (0.42%) Istio
15 22 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.28%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.24%) HP ALM
17 16 (0.24%) Packer
18 12 (0.18%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,153 (32.29%) Microsoft
2 633 (9.49%) Databricks
3 313 (4.69%) ServiceNow
4 259 (3.88%) VMware
5 253 (3.79%) Oracle
6 247 (3.70%) Google
7 192 (2.88%) SAP
8 184 (2.76%) Cisco
9 178 (2.67%) OpenAI
10 129 (1.93%) Splunk
11 125 (1.87%) Palo Alto
12 123 (1.84%) CyberArk
12 123 (1.84%) Salesforce
13 112 (1.68%) Foundry
14 89 (1.33%) Okta
15 85 (1.27%) Dynatrace
16 74 (1.11%) Zscaler
17 68 (1.02%) Informatica
18 57 (0.85%) Citrix
18 57 (0.85%) Red Hat