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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,957 4,103 5,133
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.50% 14.96% 14.36%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.43% 39.99% 43.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,884 2,853 3,769
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £632 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 32 42
10th Percentile £19.50 £25.10 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £27.24 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +17.62% -38.75%
75th Percentile £80.00 £76.56 £59.95
90th Percentile £100.85 £100.00 £69.29
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £38.50
% change year-on-year +16.75% +27.92% -35.73%

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 15,657 10,260 11,879
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.88% 37.41% 33.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,474 6,938 8,456
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £420 £409 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £718 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £519 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.64% -4.62% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 555 269 297
10th Percentile £16.70 £14.99 £14.15
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.06% +14.32% -36.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.39 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.12 £27.50 £22.00
% change year-on-year +34.98% +25.00% -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 20 July 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 20 July 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 20 July 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 3,624 £550 - 1,179
North of England +7 1,011 £500 +1.52% 523
South East +2 885 £525 +5.00% 636
Midlands +3 624 £498 +0.51% 274
North West +8 528 £503 +0.50% 271
West Midlands +2 469 £498 -5.24% 176
South West +7 449 £540 +7.90% 211
Yorkshire +3 405 £500 +5.26% 173
East of England +5 185 £550 -2.22% 154
East Midlands +4 144 £481 +4.05% 98
North East +4 91 £525 +5.00% 87
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
1 355 (5.10%) SharePoint
2 231 (3.32%) Confluence
3 174 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
4 162 (2.33%) Apache Spark
5 116 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
6 104 (1.49%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 18 (0.26%) CMS
10 15 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 12 (0.17%) Palantir Foundry
12 9 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) Camunda
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.086%) Documentum
16 5 (0.072%) Jupyter
16 5 (0.072%) Oracle Workflow
16 5 (0.072%) Tomcat
Applications
1 109 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 66 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
4 32 (0.46%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 27 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.13%) Trello
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
11 4 (0.057%) Notion
12 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.029%) Houdini
13 2 (0.029%) NUKE
13 2 (0.029%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.014%) InDesign
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 99 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Maximo
6 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.10%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 6 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.086%) Shopify
8 5 (0.072%) Endur
8 5 (0.072%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.072%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.072%) SimCorp Dimension
8 5 (0.072%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.072%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.057%) Quorum
9 4 (0.057%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,461 (35.37%) AWS
2 1,425 (20.48%) Azure DevOps
3 1,168 (16.79%) GCP
4 909 (13.07%) Entra ID
5 874 (12.56%) Power Platform
6 698 (10.03%) Microsoft 365
7 646 (9.29%) GitHub
8 420 (6.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 385 (5.53%) GitHub Actions
10 306 (4.40%) Serverless
11 293 (4.21%) SaaS
12 283 (4.07%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 246 (3.54%) Azure AKS
14 239 (3.44%) Azure Monitor
15 233 (3.35%) Power Automate
16 225 (3.23%) PaaS
17 221 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
18 208 (2.99%) PowerApps
19 204 (2.93%) Snowflake
20 191 (2.75%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 458 (6.58%) Firewall
2 338 (4.86%) DNS
3 277 (3.98%) VPN
4 238 (3.42%) Network Security
5 184 (2.64%) WAN
6 176 (2.53%) DHCP
7 144 (2.07%) TCP/IP
8 120 (1.72%) LAN
9 111 (1.60%) BGP
10 91 (1.31%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.28%) OSPF
12 82 (1.18%) VLAN
13 71 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.82%) SSL
15 56 (0.80%) SAN
16 51 (0.73%) Wireless
17 47 (0.68%) IPsec
18 46 (0.66%) Kerberos
19 41 (0.59%) VXLAN
20 37 (0.53%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 615 (8.84%) Power BI
2 411 (5.91%) SQL Server
3 353 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
4 301 (4.33%) Data Lake
5 254 (3.65%) PostgreSQL
6 177 (2.54%) NoSQL
7 173 (2.49%) Azure SQL Database
8 166 (2.39%) Metadata
9 120 (1.72%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.68%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.34%) Big Data
12 83 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 72 (1.03%) MongoDB
14 70 (1.01%) Tableau
15 62 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.82%) BigQuery
17 55 (0.79%) MySQL
18 53 (0.76%) Oracle Database
19 47 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
20 46 (0.66%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 520 (7.47%) JIRA
2 514 (7.39%) Git
3 328 (4.71%) Jenkins
4 246 (3.54%) GitLab
5 105 (1.51%) Selenium
6 58 (0.83%) JUnit
7 54 (0.78%) Postman
8 53 (0.76%) JMeter
9 48 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 42 (0.60%) Cypress.io
10 42 (0.60%) SonarQube
11 39 (0.56%) WebDriver
12 37 (0.53%) REST Assured
12 37 (0.53%) Visual Studio
13 35 (0.50%) Maven
13 35 (0.50%) MLflow
14 28 (0.40%) Gradle
15 25 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
16 24 (0.34%) Bitbucket
17 23 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 1,752 (25.18%) Social Skills
2 1,364 (19.61%) Finance
3 749 (10.77%) Public Sector
4 687 (9.87%) Analytical Skills
5 394 (5.66%) Banking
6 203 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
7 167 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 165 (2.37%) Retail
9 154 (2.21%) Legal
10 92 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 74 (1.06%) Telecoms
13 68 (0.98%) Law
14 64 (0.92%) Front Office
14 64 (0.92%) Investment Banking
14 64 (0.92%) Marketing
15 61 (0.88%) Financial Institution
15 61 (0.88%) Manufacturing
16 55 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
17 50 (0.72%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,238 (17.80%) Architect
2 869 (12.49%) Senior
3 836 (12.02%) Developer
4 608 (8.74%) Azure Engineer
5 561 (8.06%) Lead
6 525 (7.55%) Data Engineer
7 433 (6.22%) Analyst
8 374 (5.38%) Solutions Architect
9 335 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
10 289 (4.15%) Cloud Engineer
11 277 (3.98%) Consultant
12 261 (3.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 203 (2.92%) Data Architect
14 176 (2.53%) Azure Architect
14 176 (2.53%) Platform Engineer
15 171 (2.46%) Security Engineer
16 164 (2.36%) Business Analyst
16 164 (2.36%) Project Manager
17 161 (2.31%) Technical Architect
18 153 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 524 (7.53%) .NET
2 469 (6.74%) REST
3 270 (3.88%) Kafka
3 270 (3.88%) React
4 220 (3.16%) RESTful
5 215 (3.09%) PySpark
6 207 (2.98%) OAuth
7 170 (2.44%) Spring
8 164 (2.36%) Node.js
9 157 (2.26%) JSON
10 154 (2.21%) AngularJS
11 138 (1.98%) Spring Boot
12 132 (1.90%) SAML
13 128 (1.84%) OpenID
14 123 (1.77%) HTML
15 121 (1.74%) LDAP
16 119 (1.71%) .NET Framework
17 116 (1.67%) OAuth2
18 114 (1.64%) Middleware
19 110 (1.58%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 737 (10.59%) Cloud Native
2 316 (4.54%) Onboarding
3 286 (4.11%) Product Ownership
4 229 (3.29%) Data Centre
5 228 (3.28%) Distributed Systems
6 218 (3.13%) Hybrid Cloud
7 204 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
8 182 (2.62%) AI Agents
9 151 (2.17%) Security Posture
10 146 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
11 124 (1.78%) Public Cloud
12 112 (1.61%) Data Structures
13 103 (1.48%) Management Information System
14 93 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 88 (1.26%) Replication
16 84 (1.21%) PKI
17 82 (1.18%) Enterprise Cloud
18 76 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
19 70 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
20 61 (0.88%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 821 (11.80%) Windows
2 378 (5.43%) Linux
3 257 (3.69%) Windows Server
4 108 (1.55%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.05%) Unix
6 70 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 64 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 63 (0.91%) Android
9 61 (0.88%) Apple iOS
10 45 (0.65%) VMS
11 40 (0.57%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.086%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.086%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.072%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,538 (36.48%) DevOps
2 2,130 (30.62%) CI/CD
3 1,731 (24.88%) Agile
4 1,109 (15.94%) AI
5 1,047 (15.05%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,014 (14.58%) Migration
7 1,001 (14.39%) Analytics
8 932 (13.40%) Problem-Solving
9 924 (13.28%) Stakeholder Management
10 785 (11.28%) Data Modelling
11 734 (10.55%) Continuous Improvement
12 680 (9.77%) Data Pipeline
13 677 (9.73%) Roadmaps
14 664 (9.54%) Business Intelligence
15 624 (8.97%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 620 (8.91%) Containerisation
17 611 (8.78%) Microservices
18 598 (8.60%) ETL
19 577 (8.29%) Data Engineering
20 536 (7.70%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,621 (23.30%) Python
2 1,395 (20.05%) SQL
3 720 (10.35%) PowerShell
4 571 (8.21%) Java
5 526 (7.56%) C#
6 380 (5.46%) JavaScript
7 287 (4.13%) Bash
8 250 (3.59%) TypeScript
9 245 (3.52%) Bicep
10 89 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 74 (1.06%) Go
13 59 (0.85%) Scala
14 48 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
15 39 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 34 (0.49%) R
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 25 (0.36%) Groovy
19 22 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,742 (25.04%) Security Cleared
2 1,416 (20.35%) SC Cleared
3 515 (7.40%) Degree
4 376 (5.40%) Azure Certification
5 228 (3.28%) DV Cleared
6 219 (3.15%) CISSP
7 190 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
8 180 (2.59%) Cisco Certification
9 173 (2.49%) AWS Certification
10 170 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
11 147 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
12 104 (1.49%) CISM
13 86 (1.24%) CCNP
14 71 (1.02%) PMP
15 69 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 54 (0.78%) Master's Degree
18 50 (0.72%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
20 44 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 481 (6.91%) Data Quality
2 364 (5.23%) QA
3 289 (4.15%) GDPR
4 247 (3.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 244 (3.51%) NIST
6 162 (2.33%) Accessibility
7 94 (1.35%) NCSC
8 87 (1.25%) SLA
9 68 (0.98%) PCI DSS
10 67 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
11 65 (0.93%) WCAG
12 63 (0.91%) GRC
13 54 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 46 (0.66%) PMO
15 33 (0.47%) HIPAA
16 31 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.33%) NIST 800
18 22 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.23%) COBIT
20 15 (0.22%) Solvency II
System Software
1 878 (12.62%) Active Directory
2 728 (10.46%) Docker
3 192 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 135 (1.94%) Virtual Desktop
5 128 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
6 90 (1.29%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.89%) vSphere
8 51 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.40%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 16 (0.23%) Postfix
13 12 (0.17%) IAG
14 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.10%) Varnish
16 6 (0.086%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.072%) RACF
17 5 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.057%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,121 (16.11%) Terraform
2 987 (14.19%) Kubernetes
3 380 (5.46%) Microsoft Intune
4 344 (4.94%) Ansible
5 207 (2.98%) Grafana
6 174 (2.50%) Prometheus
7 141 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
8 99 (1.42%) SCCM
9 56 (0.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 47 (0.68%) Progress Chef
11 43 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
12 42 (0.60%) Argo
13 41 (0.59%) Puppet
14 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 26 (0.37%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 18 (0.26%) HAProxy
17 18 (0.26%) Packer
18 15 (0.22%) SCOM
19 14 (0.20%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,284 (32.83%) Microsoft
2 622 (8.94%) Databricks
3 352 (5.06%) ServiceNow
4 273 (3.92%) Oracle
5 272 (3.91%) VMware
6 258 (3.71%) Google
7 199 (2.86%) Cisco
8 198 (2.85%) SAP
9 170 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 154 (2.21%) Splunk
11 134 (1.93%) Salesforce
12 132 (1.90%) Palo Alto
13 130 (1.87%) CyberArk
14 120 (1.72%) Foundry
15 89 (1.28%) Dynatrace
16 85 (1.22%) Zscaler
17 78 (1.12%) Okta
18 65 (0.93%) Citrix
18 65 (0.93%) Informatica
19 64 (0.92%) Fortinet