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

6 months to
21 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,615 3,798 5,152
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.30% 15.23% 13.65%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.67% 40.37% 42.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,680 2,649 3,783
10th Percentile £366 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -2.90%
75th Percentile £630 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £740
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% -40.58%
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 15,147 9,408 12,111
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.03% 37.72% 32.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,256 6,392 8,645
10th Percentile £325 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £415
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 £718 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 540 233 339
10th Percentile £16.61 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £42.59 £25.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.03% +15.91% -32.31%
75th Percentile £70.00 £40.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.03 £70.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £28.60 £22.00
% change year-on-year +31.12% +30.00% -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 21 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 21 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 21 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 3,500 £540 -1.82% 802
North of England +7 946 £500 +5.26% 433
South East +2 837 £510 +2.00% 587
Midlands +2 551 £500 - 249
North West +8 485 £500 - 254
South West +7 430 £525 +0.96% 218
West Midlands +1 411 £500 -4.76% 147
Yorkshire +4 380 £500 +5.26% 111
East of England +7 168 £550 -4.76% 166
East Midlands +4 130 £500 +9.59% 101
North East +5 93 £525 +5.00% 70
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 (4.91%) SharePoint
2 194 (2.93%) Confluence
3 168 (2.54%) Apache Spark
4 166 (2.51%) Microsoft Exchange
5 110 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
6 101 (1.53%) Apache
7 36 (0.54%) SAS
8 25 (0.38%) IIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
13 9 (0.14%) Appian
13 9 (0.14%) Mendix
14 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 5 (0.076%) Jupyter
Applications
1 95 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 26 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.12%) Revit
10 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.076%) 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 93 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.17%) Maximo
6 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.12%) Shopify
8 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.091%) Endur
9 6 (0.091%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.091%) SimCorp Dimension
9 6 (0.091%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.076%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.076%) SAP MM
11 4 (0.060%) Magento
11 4 (0.060%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.060%) Oracle FAH
11 4 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,308 (34.89%) AWS
2 1,342 (20.29%) Azure DevOps
3 1,108 (16.75%) GCP
4 855 (12.93%) Power Platform
5 850 (12.85%) Entra ID
6 674 (10.19%) Microsoft 365
7 581 (8.78%) GitHub
8 427 (6.46%) Azure Data Factory
9 344 (5.20%) GitHub Actions
10 323 (4.88%) Serverless
11 275 (4.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 271 (4.10%) SaaS
13 240 (3.63%) Azure AKS
14 219 (3.31%) Power Automate
15 213 (3.22%) Dynamics 365
16 210 (3.17%) Azure Monitor
16 210 (3.17%) PaaS
17 194 (2.93%) Snowflake
18 185 (2.80%) PowerApps
19 180 (2.72%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 399 (6.03%) Firewall
2 298 (4.50%) DNS
3 239 (3.61%) VPN
4 221 (3.34%) Network Security
5 190 (2.87%) WAN
6 158 (2.39%) DHCP
7 115 (1.74%) LAN
8 98 (1.48%) TCP/IP
9 97 (1.47%) SD-WAN
10 88 (1.33%) BGP
11 73 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
12 71 (1.07%) VLAN
13 69 (1.04%) OSPF
14 59 (0.89%) Kerberos
15 48 (0.73%) SAN
16 46 (0.70%) SSL
17 42 (0.63%) VXLAN
17 42 (0.63%) Wireless
18 35 (0.53%) IPsec
19 34 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 595 (8.99%) Power BI
2 389 (5.88%) SQL Server
3 336 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
4 314 (4.75%) Data Lake
5 225 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
6 184 (2.78%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.57%) NoSQL
8 157 (2.37%) Metadata
9 132 (2.00%) Delta Lake
10 111 (1.68%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.33%) Big Data
12 82 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.13%) Tableau
14 74 (1.12%) MongoDB
15 64 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.83%) BigQuery
16 55 (0.83%) Oracle Database
17 46 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
18 45 (0.68%) Spark SQL
18 45 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 472 (7.14%) Git
2 468 (7.07%) JIRA
3 295 (4.46%) Jenkins
4 246 (3.72%) GitLab
5 97 (1.47%) Selenium
6 57 (0.86%) JMeter
7 55 (0.83%) Postman
8 51 (0.77%) JUnit
9 49 (0.74%) Cucumber
10 41 (0.62%) REST Assured
11 40 (0.60%) MLflow
11 40 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 35 (0.53%) Visual Studio
13 33 (0.50%) WebDriver
14 29 (0.44%) Cypress.io
15 28 (0.42%) Maven
16 27 (0.41%) Gatling
17 23 (0.35%) Gradle
17 23 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
18 22 (0.33%) Artifactory
General
1 1,667 (25.20%) Social Skills
2 1,318 (19.92%) Finance
3 668 (10.10%) Public Sector
4 611 (9.24%) Analytical Skills
5 386 (5.84%) Banking
6 188 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 151 (2.28%) Legal
8 146 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 133 (2.01%) Retail
10 85 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
11 67 (1.01%) Investment Banking
12 66 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
13 64 (0.97%) Financial Institution
13 64 (0.97%) Front Office
13 64 (0.97%) Law
14 57 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
15 51 (0.77%) Marketing
15 51 (0.77%) Telecoms
16 44 (0.67%) Manufacturing
17 42 (0.63%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,166 (17.63%) Architect
2 824 (12.46%) Senior
3 790 (11.94%) Developer
4 583 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 521 (7.88%) Data Engineer
6 505 (7.63%) Lead
7 399 (6.03%) Analyst
8 338 (5.11%) Solutions Architect
9 327 (4.94%) DevOps Engineer
10 276 (4.17%) Consultant
11 258 (3.90%) Cloud Engineer
12 235 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 181 (2.74%) Data Architect
14 177 (2.68%) Azure Architect
15 173 (2.62%) Platform Engineer
16 172 (2.60%) Security Engineer
17 154 (2.33%) Technical Architect
18 151 (2.28%) Business Analyst
19 145 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 145 (2.19%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 500 (7.56%) .NET
2 439 (6.64%) REST
3 268 (4.05%) React
4 245 (3.70%) Kafka
5 224 (3.39%) PySpark
6 207 (3.13%) RESTful
7 197 (2.98%) OAuth
8 171 (2.59%) Node.js
9 168 (2.54%) Spring
10 155 (2.34%) AngularJS
11 147 (2.22%) LDAP
12 138 (2.09%) Spring Boot
13 136 (2.06%) JSON
13 136 (2.06%) SAML
14 124 (1.87%) OpenID
15 116 (1.75%) Middleware
16 115 (1.74%) SOAP
17 114 (1.72%) HTML
18 109 (1.65%) .NET Framework
19 98 (1.48%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 705 (10.66%) Cloud Native
2 285 (4.31%) Onboarding
3 252 (3.81%) Product Ownership
4 210 (3.17%) Data Centre
5 202 (3.05%) Hybrid Cloud
6 191 (2.89%) Distributed Systems
7 174 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
8 153 (2.31%) Security Posture
9 147 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
10 143 (2.16%) AI Agents
11 137 (2.07%) Public Cloud
12 101 (1.53%) Data Structures
13 85 (1.28%) Management Information System
14 84 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
15 83 (1.25%) Replication
16 70 (1.06%) Enterprise Cloud
16 70 (1.06%) PKI
17 67 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
18 60 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
19 55 (0.83%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 781 (11.81%) Windows
2 325 (4.91%) Linux
3 240 (3.63%) Windows Server
4 103 (1.56%) Windows 10
5 68 (1.03%) Unix
6 64 (0.97%) Apple iOS
7 59 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 56 (0.85%) Android
8 56 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 52 (0.79%) VMS
10 29 (0.44%) Ubuntu
11 24 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.17%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.091%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.091%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,417 (36.54%) DevOps
2 2,035 (30.76%) CI/CD
3 1,562 (23.61%) Agile
4 1,030 (15.57%) AI
5 975 (14.74%) Analytics
5 975 (14.74%) Infrastructure as Code
6 945 (14.29%) Migration
7 918 (13.88%) Problem-Solving
8 757 (11.44%) Stakeholder Management
9 741 (11.20%) Data Modelling
10 655 (9.90%) Continuous Improvement
11 649 (9.81%) Data Pipeline
12 641 (9.69%) Business Intelligence
12 641 (9.69%) Roadmaps
13 612 (9.25%) ETL
14 589 (8.90%) Containerisation
15 567 (8.57%) Microservices
16 566 (8.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 554 (8.37%) Data Engineering
18 491 (7.42%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,568 (23.70%) Python
2 1,385 (20.94%) SQL
3 672 (10.16%) PowerShell
4 548 (8.28%) Java
5 525 (7.94%) C#
6 366 (5.53%) JavaScript
7 243 (3.67%) TypeScript
8 217 (3.28%) Bash
9 216 (3.27%) Bicep
10 87 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 76 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 71 (1.07%) Go
13 70 (1.06%) Scala
14 41 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.54%) R
16 32 (0.48%) Shell Script
17 29 (0.44%) PL/SQL
18 27 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 22 (0.33%) C++
20 15 (0.23%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,640 (24.79%) Security Cleared
2 1,364 (20.62%) SC Cleared
3 477 (7.21%) Degree
4 361 (5.46%) Azure Certification
5 217 (3.28%) CISSP
6 178 (2.69%) DV Cleared
7 173 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
8 165 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 161 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
10 156 (2.36%) AWS Certification
11 118 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
12 110 (1.66%) CISM
13 73 (1.10%) CCNP
14 72 (1.09%) PMP
15 66 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 62 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 50 (0.76%) ISTQB
18 48 (0.73%) Master's Degree
19 46 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
20 41 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 472 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 335 (5.06%) QA
3 304 (4.60%) GDPR
4 254 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 240 (3.63%) NIST
6 126 (1.90%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.45%) NCSC
8 85 (1.28%) SLA
9 74 (1.12%) PCI DSS
10 68 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
11 67 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 53 (0.80%) GRC
12 53 (0.80%) WCAG
13 38 (0.57%) PMO
14 35 (0.53%) HIPAA
15 29 (0.44%) 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
1 840 (12.70%) Active Directory
2 675 (10.20%) Docker
3 190 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 126 (1.90%) Virtual Desktop
5 114 (1.72%) Virtual Machines
6 91 (1.38%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.89%) vSphere
8 52 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.42%) Firmware
11 19 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.26%) Postfix
13 10 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.11%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.091%) KVM
16 6 (0.091%) RACF
17 5 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.076%) IAG
17 5 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,050 (15.87%) Terraform
2 916 (13.85%) Kubernetes
3 366 (5.53%) Microsoft Intune
4 302 (4.57%) Ansible
5 171 (2.59%) Grafana
6 148 (2.24%) Prometheus
7 146 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
8 92 (1.39%) SCCM
9 72 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.57%) Progress Chef
11 36 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.53%) Puppet
13 34 (0.51%) FortiGate
14 31 (0.47%) Argo
15 28 (0.42%) Istio
16 22 (0.33%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.24%) Packer
19 15 (0.23%) HP ALM
20 12 (0.18%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,140 (32.35%) Microsoft
2 631 (9.54%) Databricks
3 308 (4.66%) ServiceNow
4 260 (3.93%) VMware
5 250 (3.78%) Oracle
6 236 (3.57%) Google
7 190 (2.87%) SAP
8 180 (2.72%) Cisco
9 172 (2.60%) OpenAI
10 127 (1.92%) CyberArk
10 127 (1.92%) Splunk
11 124 (1.87%) Palo Alto
12 115 (1.74%) Salesforce
13 111 (1.68%) Foundry
14 86 (1.30%) Okta
15 80 (1.21%) Dynatrace
16 71 (1.07%) Zscaler
17 68 (1.03%) Informatica
18 57 (0.86%) Citrix
19 56 (0.85%) Red Hat