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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,143 4,058 4,828
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.65% 14.71% 14.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.72% 39.54% 42.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,004 2,811 3,521
10th Percentile £369 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 35 32
10th Percentile £19.50 £21.72 £17.84
25th Percentile £28.38 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -37.78%
75th Percentile £79.25 £76.88 £54.13
90th Percentile £100.59 £100.00 £74.47
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £43.23 £35.00
% change year-on-year +27.24% +23.50% -39.13%

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 15,974 10,263 11,233
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.01% 37.20% 33.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,659 6,965 7,964
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £422 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £643
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 567 267 239
10th Percentile £16.30 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.71 £26.00 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +37.35% +9.24% -27.88%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £52.45
90th Percentile £83.67 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £27.63 £24.15
% change year-on-year +26.67% +14.41% -31.00%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 3,741 £550 - 2,032
North of England +7 1,023 £500 +5.26% 781
South East +1 917 £525 +5.00% 816
Midlands +4 655 £493 -1.50% 377
North West +8 539 £500 +3.09% 443
West Midlands +3 495 £493 -6.19% 232
South West +7 442 £540 +8.00% 333
Yorkshire +5 402 £500 +5.26% 250
East of England +2 178 £525 -4.55% 222
East Midlands +8 148 £488 +5.41% 145
North East +7 95 £513 +2.50% 99
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
1 384 (5.38%) SharePoint
2 242 (3.39%) Confluence
3 184 (2.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 159 (2.23%) Apache Spark
5 130 (1.82%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.50%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 27 (0.38%) IIS
9 16 (0.22%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
13 8 (0.11%) nginx
14 7 (0.098%) Camunda
14 7 (0.098%) Mendix
14 7 (0.098%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.098%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.084%) Documentum
15 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 108 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 65 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 31 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
11 5 (0.070%) Notion
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 106 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Maximo
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.056%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,496 (34.94%) AWS
2 1,513 (21.18%) Azure DevOps
3 1,199 (16.79%) GCP
4 943 (13.20%) Entra ID
5 896 (12.54%) Power Platform
6 738 (10.33%) Microsoft 365
7 691 (9.67%) GitHub
8 432 (6.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 417 (5.84%) GitHub Actions
10 304 (4.26%) Serverless
11 298 (4.17%) SaaS
12 285 (3.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 260 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
14 258 (3.61%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.53%) Azure AKS
16 236 (3.30%) Dynamics 365
17 229 (3.21%) PowerApps
18 225 (3.15%) PaaS
19 219 (3.07%) Snowflake
20 201 (2.81%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 482 (6.75%) Firewall
2 362 (5.07%) DNS
3 298 (4.17%) VPN
4 264 (3.70%) Network Security
5 188 (2.63%) DHCP
6 182 (2.55%) WAN
7 162 (2.27%) TCP/IP
8 111 (1.55%) LAN
9 110 (1.54%) BGP
10 90 (1.26%) OSPF
10 90 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.23%) VLAN
12 71 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.85%) SSL
14 57 (0.80%) SAN
15 53 (0.74%) Wireless
16 44 (0.62%) VXLAN
17 42 (0.59%) IPsec
18 40 (0.56%) HTTP
19 39 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 640 (8.96%) Power BI
2 425 (5.95%) SQL Server
3 367 (5.14%) Data Warehouse
4 309 (4.33%) Data Lake
5 243 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
6 186 (2.60%) NoSQL
7 182 (2.55%) Metadata
8 177 (2.48%) Azure SQL Database
9 127 (1.78%) Delta Lake
10 118 (1.65%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.27%) Big Data
12 88 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 68 (0.95%) MongoDB
14 61 (0.85%) MySQL
15 59 (0.83%) BigQuery
15 59 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
15 59 (0.83%) Tableau
16 52 (0.73%) Oracle Database
16 52 (0.73%) Star Schema
17 48 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 549 (7.69%) Git
2 530 (7.42%) JIRA
3 353 (4.94%) Jenkins
4 283 (3.96%) GitLab
5 107 (1.50%) Selenium
6 57 (0.80%) JUnit
7 52 (0.73%) Postman
8 50 (0.70%) Cucumber
8 50 (0.70%) JMeter
9 49 (0.69%) SonarQube
10 48 (0.67%) Cypress.io
11 41 (0.57%) WebDriver
12 39 (0.55%) Maven
13 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 33 (0.46%) REST Assured
15 31 (0.43%) Gradle
16 30 (0.42%) MLflow
17 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
18 26 (0.36%) Gatling
19 25 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,841 (25.77%) Social Skills
2 1,406 (19.68%) Finance
3 778 (10.89%) Public Sector
4 714 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
5 399 (5.59%) Banking
6 191 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
7 188 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 179 (2.51%) Retail
9 149 (2.09%) Legal
10 86 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
11 83 (1.16%) Telecoms
12 79 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
13 77 (1.08%) Manufacturing
14 70 (0.98%) Law
15 68 (0.95%) Aerospace
16 67 (0.94%) Financial Institution
17 66 (0.92%) Investment Banking
17 66 (0.92%) Marketing
18 61 (0.85%) Front Office
19 55 (0.77%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,282 (17.95%) Architect
2 923 (12.92%) Senior
3 839 (11.75%) Developer
4 621 (8.69%) Azure Engineer
5 594 (8.32%) Lead
6 544 (7.62%) Data Engineer
7 432 (6.05%) Analyst
8 404 (5.66%) Solutions Architect
9 336 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
10 317 (4.44%) Cloud Engineer
11 281 (3.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 267 (3.74%) Consultant
13 215 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 191 (2.67%) Platform Engineer
15 179 (2.51%) Azure Architect
16 175 (2.45%) Security Engineer
17 171 (2.39%) Project Manager
18 159 (2.23%) Senior Developer
19 157 (2.20%) Technical Architect
20 156 (2.18%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 549 (7.69%) .NET
2 503 (7.04%) REST
3 277 (3.88%) Kafka
4 262 (3.67%) React
5 231 (3.23%) PySpark
6 228 (3.19%) RESTful
7 215 (3.01%) OAuth
8 170 (2.38%) JSON
9 152 (2.13%) Node.js
10 150 (2.10%) AngularJS
10 150 (2.10%) Spring
11 138 (1.93%) SAML
12 134 (1.88%) OpenID
13 128 (1.79%) .NET Framework
14 122 (1.71%) HTML
15 120 (1.68%) OAuth2
16 119 (1.67%) Middleware
17 116 (1.62%) Spring Boot
18 109 (1.53%) SOAP
19 102 (1.43%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 762 (10.67%) Cloud Native
2 351 (4.91%) Onboarding
3 300 (4.20%) Product Ownership
4 242 (3.39%) Hybrid Cloud
5 237 (3.32%) Distributed Systems
6 220 (3.08%) Data Centre
7 207 (2.90%) AI Agents
8 206 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
9 177 (2.48%) Enterprise Software
10 163 (2.28%) Security Posture
11 130 (1.82%) Data Structures
12 122 (1.71%) Public Cloud
13 120 (1.68%) Management Information System
14 96 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 93 (1.30%) PKI
16 91 (1.27%) Enterprise Cloud
17 78 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
18 76 (1.06%) Replication
19 70 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
20 64 (0.90%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 871 (12.19%) Windows
2 419 (5.87%) Linux
3 297 (4.16%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.67%) Windows 10
5 76 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 75 (1.05%) Unix
7 68 (0.95%) Android
8 65 (0.91%) Mac OS
9 61 (0.85%) Apple iOS
10 48 (0.67%) Ubuntu
11 43 (0.60%) VMS
12 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) CentOS
16 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 10 (0.14%) Debian
17 6 (0.084%) AIX
18 5 (0.070%) Amazon Linux
18 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,611 (36.55%) DevOps
2 2,193 (30.70%) CI/CD
3 1,772 (24.81%) Agile
4 1,149 (16.09%) AI
5 1,116 (15.62%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,047 (14.66%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,045 (14.63%) Analytics
8 1,043 (14.60%) Migration
9 960 (13.44%) Problem-Solving
10 812 (11.37%) Data Modelling
11 785 (10.99%) Continuous Improvement
12 710 (9.94%) Data Pipeline
13 695 (9.73%) Roadmaps
14 691 (9.67%) Business Intelligence
15 687 (9.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 639 (8.95%) Containerisation
17 609 (8.53%) ETL
18 595 (8.33%) Microservices
19 593 (8.30%) Data Engineering
20 579 (8.11%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,664 (23.30%) Python
2 1,423 (19.92%) SQL
3 766 (10.72%) PowerShell
4 571 (7.99%) Java
5 546 (7.64%) C#
6 420 (5.88%) JavaScript
7 332 (4.65%) Bash
8 284 (3.98%) Bicep
9 252 (3.53%) TypeScript
10 93 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 62 (0.87%) Go
13 52 (0.73%) Scala
14 50 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 33 (0.46%) R
18 28 (0.39%) Groovy
18 28 (0.39%) PL/SQL
19 26 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,827 (25.58%) Security Cleared
2 1,471 (20.59%) SC Cleared
3 521 (7.29%) Degree
4 396 (5.54%) Azure Certification
5 243 (3.40%) DV Cleared
6 232 (3.25%) CISSP
7 204 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
8 187 (2.62%) Cisco Certification
9 177 (2.48%) AWS Certification
10 167 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
11 152 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
12 109 (1.53%) CISM
13 89 (1.25%) CCNP
14 72 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 72 (1.01%) PMP
15 70 (0.98%) PMI Certification
16 52 (0.73%) ISTQB
16 52 (0.73%) Master's Degree
16 52 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
17 46 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 503 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 375 (5.25%) QA
3 288 (4.03%) GDPR
4 263 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 260 (3.64%) NIST
6 168 (2.35%) Accessibility
7 97 (1.36%) NCSC
8 94 (1.32%) SLA
9 71 (0.99%) WCAG
10 70 (0.98%) PCI DSS
11 68 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
11 68 (0.95%) GRC
12 56 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 51 (0.71%) PMO
14 32 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 28 (0.39%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.29%) NIST 800
18 16 (0.22%) COBIT
19 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 902 (12.63%) Active Directory
2 768 (10.75%) Docker
3 204 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 137 (1.92%) Virtual Desktop
5 136 (1.90%) Virtual Machines
6 102 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.85%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.42%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 14 (0.20%) IAG
12 14 (0.20%) Postfix
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.098%) Varnish
15 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 6 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.070%) BitLocker
16 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.056%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,179 (16.51%) Terraform
2 1,042 (14.59%) Kubernetes
3 393 (5.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 384 (5.38%) Ansible
5 215 (3.01%) Grafana
6 179 (2.51%) Prometheus
7 128 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.47%) SCCM
9 58 (0.81%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.69%) Argo
11 45 (0.63%) Puppet
12 39 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 26 (0.36%) Istio
16 21 (0.29%) SCOM
16 21 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.28%) Packer
18 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
19 13 (0.18%) CASB
Vendors
1 2,426 (33.96%) Microsoft
2 666 (9.32%) Databricks
3 364 (5.10%) ServiceNow
4 294 (4.12%) VMware
5 279 (3.91%) Google
6 278 (3.89%) Oracle
7 214 (3.00%) Cisco
8 194 (2.72%) SAP
9 163 (2.28%) OpenAI
10 161 (2.25%) Splunk
11 143 (2.00%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.96%) CyberArk
13 131 (1.83%) Salesforce
14 119 (1.67%) Foundry
15 101 (1.41%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.30%) Zscaler
17 69 (0.97%) Fortinet
17 69 (0.97%) Okta
18 68 (0.95%) Informatica
19 65 (0.91%) Citrix