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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,929 4,060 5,190
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.48% 14.94% 14.20%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.30% 39.99% 43.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,882 2,825 3,803
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £630 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £521 £525
% change year-on-year +0.72% -0.71% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 32 48
10th Percentile £20.50 £25.10 £17.80
25th Percentile £35.50 £27.24 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £42.34
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +2.09% -29.32%
75th Percentile £80.00 £76.56 £61.60
90th Percentile £100.85 £100.00 £66.93
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +7.48% +15.85% -22.90%

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 15,640 10,152 12,047
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.94% 37.35% 32.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,495 6,858 8,574
10th Percentile £325 £311 £312
25th Percentile £420 £409 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.40% -4.67% -4.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 559 270 321
10th Percentile £16.70 £14.99 £14.16
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% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £41.09 £43.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.12 £27.50 £22.15
% change year-on-year +34.98% +24.15% -36.71%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 3,618 £550 - 958
North of England +7 1,015 £500 +2.30% 491
South East +2 866 £525 +5.00% 651
Midlands +3 619 £500 +0.50% 278
North West +7 533 £500 - 258
West Midlands +2 464 £500 -4.76% 172
South West +7 443 £538 +7.60% 270
Yorkshire +3 405 £500 +5.26% 161
East of England +3 187 £550 -2.22% 159
East Midlands +4 144 £488 +5.41% 106
North East +4 90 £525 +5.00% 80
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
1 353 (5.09%) SharePoint
2 229 (3.30%) Confluence
3 172 (2.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 162 (2.34%) Apache Spark
5 115 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
6 104 (1.50%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 26 (0.38%) IIS
9 18 (0.26%) CMS
10 15 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.14%) Camunda
13 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.087%) Appian
15 6 (0.087%) Documentum
15 6 (0.087%) Mendix
16 5 (0.072%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 109 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
3 66 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
4 34 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 27 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.12%) Revit
11 6 (0.087%) Trello
12 4 (0.058%) Notion
13 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.043%) PTC Creo
14 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
15 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 1 (0.014%) Houdini
15 1 (0.014%) InDesign
15 1 (0.014%) NUKE
15 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 100 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 72 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.19%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.12%) Magento
5 8 (0.12%) Maximo
5 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.10%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.10%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.087%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.087%) Shopify
8 5 (0.072%) Endur
8 5 (0.072%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.072%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.072%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.058%) Remedy AR System
9 4 (0.058%) Ripple
9 4 (0.058%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,448 (35.33%) AWS
2 1,428 (20.61%) Azure DevOps
3 1,160 (16.74%) GCP
4 903 (13.03%) Entra ID
5 877 (12.66%) Power Platform
6 697 (10.06%) Microsoft 365
7 637 (9.19%) GitHub
8 419 (6.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 379 (5.47%) GitHub Actions
10 304 (4.39%) Serverless
11 290 (4.19%) SaaS
12 284 (4.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 242 (3.49%) Azure AKS
14 237 (3.42%) Power Automate
15 230 (3.32%) Azure Monitor
16 225 (3.25%) PaaS
17 222 (3.20%) Dynamics 365
18 207 (2.99%) PowerApps
19 196 (2.83%) Snowflake
20 191 (2.76%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 449 (6.48%) Firewall
2 335 (4.83%) DNS
3 270 (3.90%) VPN
4 234 (3.38%) Network Security
5 183 (2.64%) WAN
6 174 (2.51%) DHCP
7 134 (1.93%) TCP/IP
8 119 (1.72%) LAN
9 110 (1.59%) BGP
10 92 (1.33%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.27%) OSPF
12 82 (1.18%) VLAN
13 71 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.82%) SSL
15 55 (0.79%) SAN
16 52 (0.75%) Kerberos
17 49 (0.71%) Wireless
18 47 (0.68%) IPsec
19 41 (0.59%) VXLAN
20 38 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 614 (8.86%) Power BI
2 415 (5.99%) SQL Server
3 349 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.36%) Data Lake
5 253 (3.65%) PostgreSQL
6 175 (2.53%) Azure SQL Database
7 174 (2.51%) NoSQL
8 162 (2.34%) Metadata
9 121 (1.75%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.69%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.34%) Big Data
12 83 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 70 (1.01%) MongoDB
13 70 (1.01%) Tableau
14 62 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.82%) BigQuery
16 55 (0.79%) MySQL
17 54 (0.78%) Oracle Database
18 47 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
18 47 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 520 (7.50%) JIRA
2 514 (7.42%) Git
3 326 (4.70%) Jenkins
4 245 (3.54%) GitLab
5 106 (1.53%) Selenium
6 58 (0.84%) JUnit
7 54 (0.78%) Postman
8 53 (0.76%) JMeter
9 48 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 42 (0.61%) SonarQube
11 41 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 39 (0.56%) REST Assured
13 38 (0.55%) WebDriver
14 36 (0.52%) MLflow
14 36 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 35 (0.51%) Maven
16 28 (0.40%) Gradle
17 26 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
18 23 (0.33%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 1,754 (25.31%) Social Skills
2 1,360 (19.63%) Finance
3 736 (10.62%) Public Sector
4 690 (9.96%) Analytical Skills
5 392 (5.66%) Banking
6 201 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
7 164 (2.37%) Retail
8 163 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 156 (2.25%) Legal
10 92 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
11 79 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
12 74 (1.07%) Telecoms
13 69 (1.00%) Law
14 64 (0.92%) Financial Institution
14 64 (0.92%) Investment Banking
15 63 (0.91%) Front Office
15 63 (0.91%) Marketing
16 62 (0.89%) Manufacturing
17 53 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
18 48 (0.69%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,222 (17.64%) Architect
2 859 (12.40%) Senior
3 836 (12.07%) Developer
4 602 (8.69%) Azure Engineer
5 560 (8.08%) Lead
6 528 (7.62%) Data Engineer
7 434 (6.26%) Analyst
8 368 (5.31%) Solutions Architect
9 333 (4.81%) DevOps Engineer
10 283 (4.08%) Cloud Engineer
10 283 (4.08%) Consultant
11 252 (3.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 197 (2.84%) Data Architect
13 178 (2.57%) Azure Architect
14 174 (2.51%) Platform Engineer
15 171 (2.47%) Security Engineer
16 164 (2.37%) Business Analyst
17 163 (2.35%) Technical Architect
18 162 (2.34%) Project Manager
19 151 (2.18%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 520 (7.50%) .NET
2 470 (6.78%) REST
3 270 (3.90%) Kafka
4 269 (3.88%) React
5 218 (3.15%) RESTful
6 216 (3.12%) PySpark
7 211 (3.05%) OAuth
8 173 (2.50%) Spring
9 163 (2.35%) Node.js
10 156 (2.25%) AngularJS
11 153 (2.21%) JSON
12 142 (2.05%) Spring Boot
13 136 (1.96%) SAML
14 126 (1.82%) LDAP
14 126 (1.82%) OpenID
15 120 (1.73%) HTML
16 118 (1.70%) .NET Framework
17 114 (1.65%) Middleware
18 112 (1.62%) OAuth2
19 111 (1.60%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 732 (10.56%) Cloud Native
2 309 (4.46%) Onboarding
3 277 (4.00%) Product Ownership
4 225 (3.25%) Data Centre
4 225 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
5 209 (3.02%) Hybrid Cloud
6 204 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
7 175 (2.53%) AI Agents
8 149 (2.15%) Security Posture
9 145 (2.09%) Enterprise Software
10 125 (1.80%) Public Cloud
11 110 (1.59%) Data Structures
12 98 (1.41%) Management Information System
13 94 (1.36%) Replication
14 93 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 82 (1.18%) PKI
16 80 (1.15%) Enterprise Cloud
17 75 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
18 68 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
19 58 (0.84%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 818 (11.81%) Windows
2 363 (5.24%) Linux
3 256 (3.69%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.53%) Windows 10
5 72 (1.04%) Unix
6 70 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 62 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 61 (0.88%) Android
9 60 (0.87%) Apple iOS
10 44 (0.64%) VMS
11 39 (0.56%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.23%) 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 (0.087%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.087%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.072%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,537 (36.61%) DevOps
2 2,122 (30.62%) CI/CD
3 1,714 (24.74%) Agile
4 1,103 (15.92%) AI
5 1,038 (14.98%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,014 (14.63%) Migration
7 993 (14.33%) Analytics
8 940 (13.57%) Problem-Solving
9 908 (13.10%) Stakeholder Management
10 783 (11.30%) Data Modelling
11 723 (10.43%) Continuous Improvement
12 680 (9.81%) Data Pipeline
13 675 (9.74%) Roadmaps
14 662 (9.55%) Business Intelligence
15 618 (8.92%) Containerisation
16 613 (8.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 605 (8.73%) Microservices
18 601 (8.67%) ETL
19 573 (8.27%) Data Engineering
20 535 (7.72%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,623 (23.42%) Python
2 1,401 (20.22%) SQL
3 715 (10.32%) PowerShell
4 571 (8.24%) Java
5 524 (7.56%) C#
6 375 (5.41%) JavaScript
7 277 (4.00%) Bash
8 246 (3.55%) TypeScript
9 233 (3.36%) Bicep
10 89 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.18%) T-SQL
12 74 (1.07%) Go
13 61 (0.88%) Scala
14 48 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.49%) R
17 32 (0.46%) Kotlin
18 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
19 24 (0.35%) Groovy
20 21 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,723 (24.87%) Security Cleared
2 1,411 (20.36%) SC Cleared
3 509 (7.35%) Degree
4 376 (5.43%) Azure Certification
5 218 (3.15%) CISSP
6 216 (3.12%) DV Cleared
7 186 (2.68%) Microsoft Certification
8 178 (2.57%) Cisco Certification
9 173 (2.50%) AWS Certification
10 171 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
11 148 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
12 104 (1.50%) CISM
13 85 (1.23%) CCNP
14 71 (1.02%) PMP
15 67 (0.97%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 66 (0.95%) PMI Certification
17 54 (0.78%) Master's Degree
18 52 (0.75%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
20 44 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 478 (6.90%) Data Quality
2 366 (5.28%) QA
3 292 (4.21%) GDPR
4 246 (3.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 244 (3.52%) NIST
6 154 (2.22%) Accessibility
7 94 (1.36%) NCSC
8 91 (1.31%) SLA
9 66 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
9 66 (0.95%) PCI DSS
10 62 (0.89%) WCAG
11 60 (0.87%) GRC
11 60 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 44 (0.64%) PMO
13 32 (0.46%) HIPAA
14 30 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 24 (0.35%) NIST 800
16 21 (0.30%) SOC 2
17 16 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 16 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 869 (12.54%) Active Directory
2 721 (10.41%) Docker
3 190 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 133 (1.92%) Virtual Desktop
5 128 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
6 88 (1.27%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.85%) vSphere
8 52 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.42%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 12 (0.17%) IAG
14 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.12%) Varnish
16 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.087%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.072%) RACF
18 5 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
19 4 (0.058%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,111 (16.03%) Terraform
2 977 (14.10%) Kubernetes
3 377 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 338 (4.88%) Ansible
5 203 (2.93%) Grafana
6 169 (2.44%) Prometheus
7 145 (2.09%) Single Sign-On
8 95 (1.37%) SCCM
9 63 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 46 (0.66%) Progress Chef
11 43 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
12 41 (0.59%) Puppet
13 40 (0.58%) Argo
14 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 26 (0.38%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) HAProxy
18 18 (0.26%) Packer
19 16 (0.23%) HP ALM
20 15 (0.22%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,285 (32.98%) Microsoft
2 624 (9.01%) Databricks
3 346 (4.99%) ServiceNow
4 273 (3.94%) Oracle
5 268 (3.87%) VMware
6 259 (3.74%) Google
7 201 (2.90%) SAP
8 193 (2.79%) Cisco
9 170 (2.45%) OpenAI
10 153 (2.21%) Splunk
11 134 (1.93%) Salesforce
12 129 (1.86%) Palo Alto
13 128 (1.85%) CyberArk
14 120 (1.73%) Foundry
15 89 (1.28%) Dynatrace
16 84 (1.21%) Okta
17 83 (1.20%) Zscaler
18 65 (0.94%) Citrix
18 65 (0.94%) Informatica
19 64 (0.92%) Fortinet