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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,058 4,079 4,854
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.64% 14.77% 14.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.67% 39.71% 42.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,943 2,834 3,548
10th Percentile £373 £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 162 33 31
10th Percentile £19.50 £20.30 £17.80
25th Percentile £28.50 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -37.78%
75th Percentile £79.75 £76.25 £55.25
90th Percentile £100.76 £100.00 £75.00
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 15,802 10,273 11,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.01% 37.21% 33.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,537 6,977 8,026
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £423 £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 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 561 266 238
10th Percentile £16.62 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.08 £18.13 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.24 £25.15 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +48.07% +5.67% -29.79%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £53.56
90th Percentile £83.75 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £27.40 £24.15
% change year-on-year +29.56% +13.46% -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 4 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 4 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 4 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 3,691 £550 - 1,653
North of England +8 1,014 £500 +5.26% 695
South East +1 904 £525 +5.00% 788
Midlands +4 651 £494 -1.25% 332
North West +8 534 £500 +5.26% 375
West Midlands +3 492 £493 -6.19% 208
South West +7 436 £539 +7.75% 315
Yorkshire +5 400 £500 +5.26% 226
East of England +4 179 £525 -4.55% 192
East Midlands +10 147 £488 +5.41% 122
North East +5 93 £520 +4.00% 105
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
1 378 (5.36%) SharePoint
2 242 (3.43%) Confluence
3 181 (2.56%) Microsoft Exchange
4 157 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 129 (1.83%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.52%) Apache
7 40 (0.57%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 15 (0.21%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.099%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.099%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.085%) Documentum
16 6 (0.085%) HCL Notes
16 6 (0.085%) Jupyter
16 6 (0.085%) Mendix
Applications
1 105 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
3 65 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
4 31 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.43%) Chatbot
6 26 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.16%) Trello
9 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
10 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
11 8 (0.11%) Revit
12 4 (0.057%) Notion
13 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.043%) Houdini
13 3 (0.043%) NUKE
14 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
15 1 (0.014%) InDesign
15 1 (0.014%) SOLIDWORKS
15 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 101 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Maximo
5 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.099%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.099%) Shopify
7 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
7 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
8 4 (0.057%) Adobe Campaign
8 4 (0.057%) Endur
8 4 (0.057%) Ripple
8 4 (0.057%) Salesforce CRM
8 4 (0.057%) SAP MM
8 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
8 4 (0.057%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,471 (35.01%) AWS
2 1,492 (21.14%) Azure DevOps
3 1,181 (16.73%) GCP
4 922 (13.06%) Entra ID
5 892 (12.64%) Power Platform
6 724 (10.26%) Microsoft 365
7 672 (9.52%) GitHub
8 430 (6.09%) Azure Data Factory
9 407 (5.77%) GitHub Actions
10 303 (4.29%) Serverless
11 290 (4.11%) SaaS
12 287 (4.07%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 253 (3.58%) Azure AKS
14 252 (3.57%) Power Automate
15 249 (3.53%) Azure Monitor
16 233 (3.30%) Dynamics 365
17 224 (3.17%) PowerApps
18 223 (3.16%) PaaS
19 212 (3.00%) Snowflake
20 197 (2.79%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 473 (6.70%) Firewall
2 354 (5.02%) DNS
3 291 (4.12%) VPN
4 258 (3.66%) Network Security
5 184 (2.61%) DHCP
6 182 (2.58%) WAN
7 158 (2.24%) TCP/IP
8 112 (1.59%) LAN
9 110 (1.56%) BGP
10 90 (1.28%) OSPF
10 90 (1.28%) SD-WAN
11 87 (1.23%) VLAN
12 71 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.86%) SSL
14 58 (0.82%) SAN
15 54 (0.77%) Wireless
16 44 (0.62%) VXLAN
17 42 (0.60%) IPsec
18 39 (0.55%) Internet
19 38 (0.54%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 639 (9.05%) Power BI
2 421 (5.96%) SQL Server
3 365 (5.17%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.32%) Data Lake
5 247 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
6 184 (2.61%) NoSQL
7 176 (2.49%) Azure SQL Database
8 173 (2.45%) Metadata
9 127 (1.80%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.64%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.25%) Big Data
11 88 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 71 (1.01%) MongoDB
13 62 (0.88%) Tableau
14 60 (0.85%) MySQL
15 59 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.81%) BigQuery
17 52 (0.74%) Oracle Database
18 51 (0.72%) Star Schema
19 50 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 547 (7.75%) Git
2 529 (7.50%) JIRA
3 352 (4.99%) Jenkins
4 273 (3.87%) GitLab
5 104 (1.47%) Selenium
6 59 (0.84%) JUnit
7 51 (0.72%) JMeter
7 51 (0.72%) Postman
8 50 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 49 (0.69%) SonarQube
10 46 (0.65%) Cypress.io
11 40 (0.57%) Maven
12 39 (0.55%) WebDriver
13 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
13 34 (0.48%) Visual Studio
14 31 (0.44%) MLflow
15 30 (0.43%) Gradle
16 28 (0.40%) Bitbucket
17 26 (0.37%) Gatling
18 25 (0.35%) MSI
General
1 1,806 (25.59%) Social Skills
2 1,383 (19.59%) Finance
3 770 (10.91%) Public Sector
4 699 (9.90%) Analytical Skills
5 401 (5.68%) Banking
6 188 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
7 183 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 177 (2.51%) Retail
9 149 (2.11%) Legal
10 85 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
11 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 79 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
13 72 (1.02%) Manufacturing
14 70 (0.99%) Law
15 67 (0.95%) Financial Institution
16 66 (0.94%) Investment Banking
17 65 (0.92%) Marketing
18 62 (0.88%) Aerospace
18 62 (0.88%) Front Office
19 55 (0.78%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,259 (17.84%) Architect
2 907 (12.85%) Senior
3 839 (11.89%) Developer
4 617 (8.74%) Azure Engineer
5 585 (8.29%) Lead
6 547 (7.75%) Data Engineer
7 428 (6.06%) Analyst
8 399 (5.65%) Solutions Architect
9 332 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
10 310 (4.39%) Cloud Engineer
11 277 (3.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 268 (3.80%) Consultant
13 212 (3.00%) Data Architect
14 186 (2.64%) Platform Engineer
15 178 (2.52%) Azure Architect
16 175 (2.48%) Security Engineer
17 163 (2.31%) Project Manager
18 159 (2.25%) Business Analyst
19 158 (2.24%) Senior Developer
20 156 (2.21%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 540 (7.65%) .NET
2 488 (6.91%) REST
3 269 (3.81%) Kafka
4 260 (3.68%) React
5 229 (3.24%) PySpark
6 228 (3.23%) RESTful
7 208 (2.95%) OAuth
8 166 (2.35%) JSON
9 156 (2.21%) Spring
10 154 (2.18%) Node.js
11 151 (2.14%) AngularJS
12 135 (1.91%) SAML
13 130 (1.84%) OpenID
14 126 (1.79%) .NET Framework
15 122 (1.73%) HTML
15 122 (1.73%) Spring Boot
16 115 (1.63%) Middleware
16 115 (1.63%) OAuth2
17 109 (1.54%) SOAP
18 100 (1.42%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 754 (10.68%) Cloud Native
2 341 (4.83%) Onboarding
3 293 (4.15%) Product Ownership
4 235 (3.33%) Hybrid Cloud
5 233 (3.30%) Distributed Systems
6 220 (3.12%) Data Centre
7 205 (2.90%) Legacy Systems
8 202 (2.86%) AI Agents
9 167 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
10 158 (2.24%) Security Posture
11 128 (1.81%) Data Structures
12 121 (1.71%) Public Cloud
13 117 (1.66%) Management Information System
14 94 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
15 91 (1.29%) PKI
16 89 (1.26%) Enterprise Cloud
17 76 (1.08%) Replication
18 75 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
19 67 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
20 59 (0.84%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 850 (12.04%) Windows
2 412 (5.84%) Linux
3 286 (4.05%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.63%) Windows 10
5 76 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 75 (1.06%) Unix
7 68 (0.96%) Android
8 65 (0.92%) Mac OS
9 61 (0.86%) Apple iOS
10 47 (0.67%) Ubuntu
11 44 (0.62%) VMS
12 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) CentOS
14 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 9 (0.13%) Debian
16 6 (0.085%) AIX
16 6 (0.085%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.071%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,578 (36.53%) DevOps
2 2,161 (30.62%) CI/CD
3 1,762 (24.96%) Agile
4 1,133 (16.05%) AI
5 1,098 (15.56%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,034 (14.65%) Migration
7 1,028 (14.57%) Analytics
8 1,020 (14.45%) Stakeholder Management
9 954 (13.52%) Problem-Solving
10 805 (11.41%) Data Modelling
11 772 (10.94%) Continuous Improvement
12 705 (9.99%) Data Pipeline
13 691 (9.79%) Business Intelligence
14 684 (9.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 682 (9.66%) Roadmaps
16 634 (8.98%) Containerisation
17 605 (8.57%) ETL
18 592 (8.39%) Microservices
19 587 (8.32%) Data Engineering
20 564 (7.99%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,643 (23.28%) Python
2 1,406 (19.92%) SQL
3 747 (10.58%) PowerShell
4 566 (8.02%) Java
5 533 (7.55%) C#
6 408 (5.78%) JavaScript
7 325 (4.60%) Bash
8 283 (4.01%) Bicep
9 246 (3.49%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 83 (1.18%) T-SQL
12 60 (0.85%) Go
13 49 (0.69%) Scala
14 44 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
15 43 (0.61%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 33 (0.47%) R
18 29 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 28 (0.40%) Groovy
20 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,802 (25.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,457 (20.64%) SC Cleared
3 520 (7.37%) Degree
4 388 (5.50%) Azure Certification
5 238 (3.37%) DV Cleared
6 224 (3.17%) CISSP
7 202 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
8 185 (2.62%) Cisco Certification
9 176 (2.49%) AWS Certification
10 169 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
11 153 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
12 107 (1.52%) CISM
13 90 (1.28%) CCNP
14 70 (0.99%) PMP
15 69 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 68 (0.96%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.74%) Master's Degree
18 50 (0.71%) ISTQB
19 49 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
20 44 (0.62%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 495 (7.01%) Data Quality
2 373 (5.28%) QA
3 281 (3.98%) GDPR
4 260 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 257 (3.64%) NIST
6 168 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.36%) NCSC
8 94 (1.33%) SLA
9 71 (1.01%) WCAG
10 70 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
11 67 (0.95%) GRC
12 66 (0.94%) PCI DSS
13 52 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 51 (0.72%) PMO
15 33 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 28 (0.40%) HIPAA
17 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.30%) NIST 800
19 16 (0.23%) COBIT
20 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 883 (12.51%) Active Directory
2 758 (10.74%) Docker
3 194 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.93%) Virtual Machines
5 133 (1.88%) Virtual Desktop
6 98 (1.39%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.88%) vSphere
8 51 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.41%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 16 (0.23%) Postfix
13 13 (0.18%) IAG
14 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.099%) Varnish
16 6 (0.085%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.085%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.071%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.057%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,162 (16.46%) Terraform
2 1,028 (14.57%) Kubernetes
3 385 (5.45%) Microsoft Intune
4 370 (5.24%) Ansible
5 215 (3.05%) Grafana
6 177 (2.51%) Prometheus
7 125 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
8 103 (1.46%) SCCM
9 53 (0.75%) Progress Chef
10 50 (0.71%) Argo
11 45 (0.64%) Puppet
12 39 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 32 (0.45%) FortiGate
15 26 (0.37%) Istio
16 20 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) Packer
18 18 (0.26%) HAProxy
18 18 (0.26%) SCOM
19 12 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,380 (33.72%) Microsoft
2 665 (9.42%) Databricks
3 359 (5.09%) ServiceNow
4 284 (4.02%) VMware
5 277 (3.92%) Google
6 274 (3.88%) Oracle
7 213 (3.02%) Cisco
8 192 (2.72%) SAP
9 161 (2.28%) OpenAI
10 158 (2.24%) Splunk
11 142 (2.01%) Palo Alto
12 137 (1.94%) CyberArk
13 131 (1.86%) Salesforce
14 118 (1.67%) Foundry
15 101 (1.43%) Dynatrace
16 91 (1.29%) Zscaler
17 68 (0.96%) Fortinet
17 68 (0.96%) Okta
18 66 (0.94%) Red Hat
19 65 (0.92%) Citrix