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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,232 3,743 4,933
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.19% 15.39% 13.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.34% 41.40% 42.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,474 2,640 3,630
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £448
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 24 47
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -43.41%
75th Percentile £60.00 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £81.50 £93.61 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -43.41%

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 14,379 9,041 11,693
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.04% 37.17% 32.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,853 6,260 8,438
10th Percentile £320 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £743
UK median daily rate £505 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 463 202 327
10th Percentile £15.30 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.13 £15.87
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +54.90% +19.33% -35.73%
75th Percentile £66.25 £37.50 £35.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £72.38 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £36.36 £27.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +32.20% +28.69% -38.94%

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 19 May 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 19 May 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 19 May 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 3,331 £540 -1.82% 1,019
North of England +3 879 £500 +5.26% 566
South East +3 818 £500 -3.29% 659
Midlands -4 489 £493 -1.50% 278
North West +3 450 £500 +0.81% 314
South West +6 386 £525 - 269
Yorkshire +7 364 £500 +15.94% 158
West Midlands -1 353 £500 -4.76% 166
East of England +3 145 £550 -8.33% 187
East Midlands +3 126 £463 - 111
North East -1 74 £525 +7.69% 95
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
1 300 (4.81%) SharePoint
2 175 (2.81%) Apache Spark
2 175 (2.81%) Confluence
3 170 (2.73%) Microsoft Exchange
4 91 (1.46%) Apache
5 85 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
6 23 (0.37%) IIS
7 16 (0.26%) SAS
8 14 (0.22%) CMS
9 13 (0.21%) Mendix
10 12 (0.19%) Appian
10 12 (0.19%) ArcGIS
10 12 (0.19%) Camunda
10 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 10 (0.16%) OpenStack
11 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 6 (0.096%) Umbraco
14 5 (0.080%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.080%) WebLogic
Applications
1 84 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.080%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.064%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.064%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.064%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.048%) Revit
10 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.016%) InDesign
11 1 (0.016%) Notion
11 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 90 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.096%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.080%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.080%) Shopify
9 5 (0.080%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.064%) Magento
10 4 (0.064%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.064%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.064%) SAP BPC
11 3 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
11 3 (0.048%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,138 (34.31%) AWS
2 1,259 (20.20%) Azure DevOps
3 1,115 (17.89%) GCP
4 791 (12.69%) Power Platform
5 771 (12.37%) Entra ID
6 649 (10.41%) Microsoft 365
7 571 (9.16%) GitHub
8 453 (7.27%) Azure Data Factory
9 325 (5.22%) GitHub Actions
10 310 (4.97%) Serverless
11 296 (4.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 247 (3.96%) SaaS
13 235 (3.77%) Azure AKS
14 220 (3.53%) Dynamics 365
15 213 (3.42%) Power Automate
16 210 (3.37%) PaaS
17 201 (3.23%) Azure Monitor
18 173 (2.78%) IaaS
18 173 (2.78%) PowerApps
19 172 (2.76%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 381 (6.11%) Firewall
2 271 (4.35%) DNS
3 229 (3.67%) VPN
4 208 (3.34%) Network Security
5 172 (2.76%) WAN
6 147 (2.36%) DHCP
7 116 (1.86%) LAN
8 89 (1.43%) SD-WAN
9 88 (1.41%) TCP/IP
10 74 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
11 70 (1.12%) BGP
11 70 (1.12%) VLAN
12 66 (1.06%) Kerberos
13 60 (0.96%) OSPF
14 45 (0.72%) SAN
15 39 (0.63%) Wireless
16 38 (0.61%) SSL
17 35 (0.56%) VXLAN
18 30 (0.48%) HTTP
19 28 (0.45%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 546 (8.76%) Power BI
2 373 (5.99%) SQL Server
3 322 (5.17%) Data Warehouse
4 301 (4.83%) Data Lake
5 205 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
6 193 (3.10%) Azure SQL Database
7 172 (2.76%) NoSQL
8 142 (2.28%) Metadata
9 138 (2.21%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.54%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 86 (1.38%) Big Data
13 75 (1.20%) MongoDB
14 72 (1.16%) Tableau
15 62 (0.99%) Oracle Database
16 60 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
17 57 (0.91%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.74%) Spark SQL
18 46 (0.74%) Star Schema
19 41 (0.66%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 452 (7.25%) Git
2 431 (6.92%) JIRA
3 308 (4.94%) Jenkins
4 238 (3.82%) GitLab
5 93 (1.49%) Selenium
6 60 (0.96%) Postman
7 50 (0.80%) Cucumber
7 50 (0.80%) MLflow
8 48 (0.77%) JMeter
9 46 (0.74%) JUnit
10 41 (0.66%) REST Assured
11 37 (0.59%) SonarQube
12 30 (0.48%) Artifactory
13 29 (0.47%) Cypress.io
14 26 (0.42%) Maven
15 25 (0.40%) Visual Studio
16 24 (0.39%) Gatling
16 24 (0.39%) WebDriver
17 22 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.35%) TestRail
General
1 1,571 (25.21%) Social Skills
2 1,191 (19.11%) Finance
3 629 (10.09%) Public Sector
4 563 (9.03%) Analytical Skills
5 363 (5.82%) Banking
6 171 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
7 145 (2.33%) Legal
8 99 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 97 (1.56%) Retail
10 88 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
11 71 (1.14%) Financial Institution
12 64 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 64 (1.03%) Investment Banking
13 61 (0.98%) Marketing
14 60 (0.96%) Front Office
14 60 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
15 56 (0.90%) Law
16 50 (0.80%) Telecoms
17 41 (0.66%) Military
18 38 (0.61%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,058 (16.98%) Architect
2 757 (12.15%) Senior
3 752 (12.07%) Developer
4 581 (9.32%) Azure Engineer
5 533 (8.55%) Data Engineer
6 450 (7.22%) Lead
7 381 (6.11%) Analyst
8 324 (5.20%) DevOps Engineer
9 288 (4.62%) Solutions Architect
10 258 (4.14%) Consultant
11 211 (3.39%) Cloud Engineer
12 206 (3.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 168 (2.70%) Azure Architect
14 164 (2.63%) Security Engineer
15 153 (2.46%) Data Architect
16 149 (2.39%) Platform Engineer
17 141 (2.26%) Technical Architect
18 137 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 134 (2.15%) Project Manager
20 132 (2.12%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 471 (7.56%) .NET
2 400 (6.42%) REST
3 254 (4.08%) React
4 237 (3.80%) Kafka
5 231 (3.71%) PySpark
6 183 (2.94%) Node.js
7 181 (2.90%) RESTful
8 170 (2.73%) OAuth
9 162 (2.60%) Spring
10 160 (2.57%) LDAP
11 157 (2.52%) AngularJS
12 131 (2.10%) Spring Boot
13 124 (1.99%) JSON
13 124 (1.99%) Middleware
14 122 (1.96%) SOAP
15 114 (1.83%) SAML
16 109 (1.75%) OpenID
17 108 (1.73%) HTML
18 96 (1.54%) .NET Framework
19 95 (1.52%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 608 (9.76%) Cloud Native
2 250 (4.01%) Onboarding
3 214 (3.43%) Product Ownership
4 182 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
5 177 (2.84%) Data Centre
6 155 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
7 145 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
8 143 (2.29%) Security Posture
9 139 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
10 131 (2.10%) Public Cloud
11 121 (1.94%) AI Agents
12 87 (1.40%) Data Structures
13 84 (1.35%) Replication
14 70 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
15 65 (1.04%) Management Information System
16 57 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
17 56 (0.90%) PKI
18 54 (0.87%) Low-Code
19 52 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
20 51 (0.82%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 702 (11.26%) Windows
2 314 (5.04%) Linux
3 208 (3.34%) Windows Server
4 114 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.06%) Unix
6 61 (0.98%) Mac OS
7 60 (0.96%) Apple iOS
8 56 (0.90%) VMS
9 48 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 40 (0.64%) Android
11 24 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 9 (0.14%) Debian
16 8 (0.13%) CentOS
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.096%) AIX
18 6 (0.096%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,316 (37.16%) DevOps
2 1,916 (30.74%) CI/CD
3 1,431 (22.96%) Agile
4 922 (14.79%) Analytics
5 894 (14.35%) Infrastructure as Code
6 892 (14.31%) Problem-Solving
7 884 (14.18%) AI
8 867 (13.91%) Migration
9 723 (11.60%) Data Modelling
10 630 (10.11%) Stakeholder Management
11 618 (9.92%) Data Pipeline
12 607 (9.74%) Business Intelligence
13 597 (9.58%) ETL
14 587 (9.42%) Continuous Improvement
15 570 (9.15%) Containerisation
16 543 (8.71%) Roadmaps
17 534 (8.57%) Microservices
18 531 (8.52%) Data Engineering
19 499 (8.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 451 (7.24%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,498 (24.04%) Python
2 1,335 (21.42%) SQL
3 646 (10.37%) PowerShell
4 517 (8.30%) C#
5 509 (8.17%) Java
6 358 (5.74%) JavaScript
7 215 (3.45%) Bash
8 214 (3.43%) TypeScript
9 199 (3.19%) Bicep
10 91 (1.46%) Scala
11 83 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 78 (1.25%) T-SQL
13 72 (1.16%) Go
14 46 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.71%) PL/SQL
16 37 (0.59%) R
17 35 (0.56%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.35%) C++
19 21 (0.34%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,560 (25.03%) Security Cleared
2 1,309 (21.00%) SC Cleared
3 447 (7.17%) Degree
4 345 (5.54%) Azure Certification
5 178 (2.86%) CISSP
6 169 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
7 147 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
8 141 (2.26%) DV Cleared
9 138 (2.21%) Microsoft Certification
10 122 (1.96%) AWS Certification
11 104 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
12 101 (1.62%) CISM
13 70 (1.12%) CCNP
14 67 (1.08%) PMP
15 63 (1.01%) PMI Certification
16 54 (0.87%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 52 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 51 (0.82%) TOGAF Certification
19 47 (0.75%) ISTQB
20 38 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (7.19%) Data Quality
2 331 (5.31%) QA
3 307 (4.93%) GDPR
4 246 (3.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 230 (3.69%) NIST
6 102 (1.64%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.30%) NCSC
8 78 (1.25%) PCI DSS
9 66 (1.06%) SLA
10 61 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 60 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
12 49 (0.79%) PMO
13 47 (0.75%) GRC
14 38 (0.61%) WCAG
15 35 (0.56%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.39%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 17 (0.27%) ISO 20022
18 17 (0.27%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 794 (12.74%) Active Directory
2 673 (10.80%) Docker
3 179 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 106 (1.70%) Virtual Machines
6 87 (1.40%) Hyper-V
7 55 (0.88%) vSphere
8 36 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.42%) Firmware
10 21 (0.34%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.30%) NFS
12 12 (0.19%) Postfix
13 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.096%) RACF
16 5 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.080%) KVM
16 5 (0.080%) Snort
16 5 (0.080%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.064%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 975 (15.65%) Terraform
2 893 (14.33%) Kubernetes
3 328 (5.26%) Microsoft Intune
4 276 (4.43%) Ansible
5 167 (2.68%) Grafana
6 143 (2.29%) Prometheus
7 132 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 97 (1.56%) SCCM
9 68 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 34 (0.55%) Istio
10 34 (0.55%) Puppet
11 31 (0.50%) Argo
12 28 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 28 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.27%) HP ALM
16 15 (0.24%) HAProxy
16 15 (0.24%) Kubeflow
16 15 (0.24%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,026 (32.51%) Microsoft
2 634 (10.17%) Databricks
3 283 (4.54%) ServiceNow
4 258 (4.14%) Oracle
5 249 (4.00%) VMware
6 239 (3.84%) Google
7 186 (2.98%) SAP
8 165 (2.65%) Cisco
9 158 (2.54%) OpenAI
10 139 (2.23%) Splunk
11 130 (2.09%) CyberArk
12 113 (1.81%) Palo Alto
13 99 (1.59%) Foundry
14 92 (1.48%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.27%) Okta
16 71 (1.14%) Dynatrace
17 68 (1.09%) Citrix
18 64 (1.03%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (1.03%) Zscaler
19 58 (0.93%) Informatica