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

6 months to
6 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,031 3,881 4,998
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.60% 15.92% 13.38%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.89% 42.09% 41.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,339 2,775 3,683
10th Percentile £358 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.09%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £528
% change year-on-year -0.95% -0.57% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 29 52
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.89 £26.45 £22.58
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +45.58% -30.56%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £85.40 £84.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £36.75
% change year-on-year +70.37% -8.16% -31.94%

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 14,062 9,221 11,999
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.37% 37.83% 32.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,696 6,498 8,621
10th Percentile £313 £313 £280
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 429 182 321
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.46 £18.50 £15.89
Median hourly rate £42.69 £26.48 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +61.23% +27.47% -21.56%
75th Percentile £67.50 £42.74 £33.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.45 £59.95
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £26.81 £21.00
% change year-on-year +49.18% +27.68% -25.43%

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 6 April 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 6 April 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 6 April 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 3,278 £538 -2.27% 1,004
North of England +3 816 £489 +0.82% 604
South East +1 748 £500 -6.98% 685
Midlands 0 503 £488 -6.25% 369
North West +2 437 £479 -4.28% 303
West Midlands 0 375 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 354 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire 0 335 £500 +12.68% 208
East of England +8 150 £538 -7.33% 207
East Midlands -1 119 £436 -8.21% 163
North East -6 47 £525 +7.69% 97
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
1 293 (4.86%) SharePoint
2 182 (3.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 170 (2.82%) Apache Spark
4 163 (2.70%) Confluence
5 99 (1.64%) Apache
6 92 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.36%) IIS
7 22 (0.36%) SAS
8 16 (0.27%) Appian
8 16 (0.27%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.25%) Camunda
10 13 (0.22%) CMS
11 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.18%) Mendix
12 9 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.083%) BizTalk Server
14 5 (0.083%) WebLogic
Applications
1 108 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.083%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.083%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.066%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.066%) Weka
11 3 (0.050%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.033%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.017%) InDesign
13 1 (0.017%) Revit
Business Applications
1 102 (1.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (1.06%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
6 7 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.099%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.066%) Cloudability
9 4 (0.066%) Dynamics AX
9 4 (0.066%) Endur
9 4 (0.066%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.066%) Oracle 11i
9 4 (0.066%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.066%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.066%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.066%) Workday HCM
10 3 (0.050%) Elite 3E
Cloud Services
1 2,088 (34.62%) AWS
2 1,250 (20.73%) Azure DevOps
3 1,154 (19.13%) GCP
4 811 (13.45%) Power Platform
5 779 (12.92%) Entra ID
6 681 (11.29%) Microsoft 365
7 586 (9.72%) GitHub
8 456 (7.56%) Azure Data Factory
9 338 (5.60%) GitHub Actions
10 335 (5.55%) Serverless
11 286 (4.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 246 (4.08%) SaaS
13 242 (4.01%) Dynamics 365
14 223 (3.70%) Azure AKS
15 222 (3.68%) Azure Monitor
16 220 (3.65%) Power Automate
17 213 (3.53%) PaaS
18 197 (3.27%) Azure Functions
19 189 (3.13%) Azure Logic Apps
20 178 (2.95%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 396 (6.57%) Firewall
2 276 (4.58%) DNS
3 241 (4.00%) VPN
4 201 (3.33%) Network Security
5 155 (2.57%) WAN
6 152 (2.52%) DHCP
7 118 (1.96%) LAN
8 94 (1.56%) TCP/IP
9 75 (1.24%) VLAN
10 74 (1.23%) SD-WAN
10 74 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
11 65 (1.08%) Kerberos
12 51 (0.85%) BGP
13 45 (0.75%) OSPF
14 39 (0.65%) Wireless
15 36 (0.60%) SAN
16 35 (0.58%) HTTP
17 34 (0.56%) SSL
18 29 (0.48%) MPLS
19 27 (0.45%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 563 (9.34%) Power BI
2 347 (5.75%) SQL Server
3 334 (5.54%) Data Warehouse
4 288 (4.78%) Data Lake
5 209 (3.47%) Azure SQL Database
6 207 (3.43%) PostgreSQL
7 183 (3.03%) NoSQL
8 146 (2.42%) Metadata
9 131 (2.17%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.59%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 82 (1.36%) Big Data
13 81 (1.34%) Tableau
14 77 (1.28%) MongoDB
15 61 (1.01%) Oracle Database
16 57 (0.95%) BigQuery
17 55 (0.91%) Snowflake Schema
18 48 (0.80%) MySQL
19 46 (0.76%) Star Schema
20 44 (0.73%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 446 (7.40%) Git
2 412 (6.83%) JIRA
3 299 (4.96%) Jenkins
4 216 (3.58%) GitLab
5 106 (1.76%) Selenium
6 68 (1.13%) Postman
7 61 (1.01%) JUnit
8 58 (0.96%) Cucumber
9 51 (0.85%) JMeter
10 49 (0.81%) MLflow
11 42 (0.70%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.58%) Cypress.io
14 33 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
15 32 (0.53%) Artifactory
16 27 (0.45%) Visual Studio
17 26 (0.43%) TestRail
18 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
19 22 (0.36%) Maven
19 22 (0.36%) Mockito
General
1 1,670 (27.69%) Social Skills
2 1,134 (18.80%) Finance
3 642 (10.65%) Public Sector
4 602 (9.98%) Analytical Skills
5 358 (5.94%) Banking
6 192 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
7 138 (2.29%) Legal
8 104 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.41%) Retail
10 82 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
10 82 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
10 82 (1.36%) Presentation Skills
11 66 (1.09%) Marketing
12 65 (1.08%) Financial Institution
12 65 (1.08%) Telecoms
13 64 (1.06%) Law
14 57 (0.95%) Investment Banking
15 56 (0.93%) Front Office
16 44 (0.73%) Local Government
17 35 (0.58%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,000 (16.58%) Architect
2 796 (13.20%) Developer
3 722 (11.97%) Senior
4 547 (9.07%) Azure Engineer
5 519 (8.61%) Data Engineer
6 459 (7.61%) Lead
7 385 (6.38%) Analyst
8 292 (4.84%) DevOps Engineer
9 268 (4.44%) Solutions Architect
10 255 (4.23%) Consultant
11 173 (2.87%) Cloud Engineer
12 170 (2.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 155 (2.57%) Platform Engineer
14 153 (2.54%) Azure Architect
15 147 (2.44%) Security Engineer
16 144 (2.39%) Senior Developer
17 127 (2.11%) Data Architect
18 123 (2.04%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 122 (2.02%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 120 (1.99%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 450 (7.46%) .NET
2 389 (6.45%) REST
3 266 (4.41%) React
4 250 (4.15%) Kafka
5 225 (3.73%) PySpark
6 211 (3.50%) Node.js
7 200 (3.32%) RESTful
8 185 (3.07%) Spring
9 176 (2.92%) OAuth
10 157 (2.60%) AngularJS
11 150 (2.49%) LDAP
12 147 (2.44%) Spring Boot
13 131 (2.17%) HTML
14 125 (2.07%) Middleware
15 120 (1.99%) JSON
16 118 (1.96%) SAML
17 115 (1.91%) SOAP
18 113 (1.87%) CSS
19 112 (1.86%) PyTorch
20 105 (1.74%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 546 (9.05%) Cloud Native
2 242 (4.01%) Onboarding
3 219 (3.63%) Product Ownership
4 177 (2.93%) Hybrid Cloud
5 153 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
5 153 (2.54%) Security Posture
6 146 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
7 142 (2.35%) Data Centre
8 133 (2.21%) Public Cloud
9 124 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
10 103 (1.71%) AI Agents
11 82 (1.36%) Data Structures
11 82 (1.36%) Replication
12 67 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
13 64 (1.06%) Management Information System
14 57 (0.95%) PKI
15 56 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
16 50 (0.83%) Algorithms
17 48 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
18 47 (0.78%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 669 (11.09%) Windows
2 311 (5.16%) Linux
3 204 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 121 (2.01%) Windows 10
5 67 (1.11%) VMS
6 57 (0.95%) Unix
7 45 (0.75%) Mac OS
8 43 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 34 (0.56%) Apple iOS
10 26 (0.43%) Android
11 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.28%) Ubuntu
12 17 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
15 7 (0.12%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.083%) AIX
16 5 (0.083%) CentOS
16 5 (0.083%) CoreOS
17 4 (0.066%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,246 (37.24%) DevOps
2 1,823 (30.23%) CI/CD
3 1,402 (23.25%) Agile
4 983 (16.30%) Problem-Solving
5 931 (15.44%) Analytics
6 870 (14.43%) AI
7 817 (13.55%) Infrastructure as Code
8 795 (13.18%) Migration
9 680 (11.28%) Data Modelling
10 626 (10.38%) Stakeholder Management
11 625 (10.36%) Business Intelligence
12 590 (9.78%) Continuous Improvement
13 577 (9.57%) Data Pipeline
13 577 (9.57%) ETL
14 570 (9.45%) Containerisation
15 543 (9.00%) Data Engineering
16 542 (8.99%) Microservices
17 507 (8.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 505 (8.37%) Machine Learning
19 487 (8.07%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,537 (25.48%) Python
2 1,373 (22.77%) SQL
3 664 (11.01%) PowerShell
4 508 (8.42%) C#
5 507 (8.41%) Java
6 410 (6.80%) JavaScript
7 233 (3.86%) TypeScript
8 216 (3.58%) Bash
9 193 (3.20%) Bicep
10 94 (1.56%) Scala
11 76 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 74 (1.23%) Go
13 71 (1.18%) PL/SQL
14 66 (1.09%) T-SQL
15 65 (1.08%) Kusto Query Language
16 40 (0.66%) R
17 36 (0.60%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.36%) PHP
19 21 (0.35%) C++
20 17 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,508 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 1,251 (20.74%) SC Cleared
3 451 (7.48%) Degree
4 350 (5.80%) Azure Certification
5 190 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
6 171 (2.84%) CISSP
7 149 (2.47%) Microsoft Certification
8 124 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
9 123 (2.04%) DV Cleared
10 115 (1.91%) AWS Certification
11 101 (1.67%) CISM
12 95 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
13 67 (1.11%) CCNP
14 63 (1.04%) Master's Degree
15 57 (0.95%) PMP
16 56 (0.93%) PMI Certification
17 53 (0.88%) TOGAF Certification
18 51 (0.85%) ISTQB
19 40 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 35 (0.58%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (7.25%) Data Quality
2 358 (5.94%) GDPR
3 328 (5.44%) QA
4 266 (4.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 230 (3.81%) NIST
6 94 (1.56%) Accessibility
7 90 (1.49%) NCSC
8 82 (1.36%) PCI DSS
9 59 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 56 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 54 (0.90%) SLA
12 49 (0.81%) PMO
13 36 (0.60%) GRC
14 33 (0.55%) WCAG
15 32 (0.53%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.40%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.35%) SOC 2
19 18 (0.30%) PSD2
System Software
1 817 (13.55%) Active Directory
2 700 (11.61%) Docker
3 184 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
5 85 (1.41%) Hyper-V
6 84 (1.39%) Virtual Desktop
7 74 (1.23%) vSphere
8 32 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
8 32 (0.53%) VMware NSX
9 22 (0.36%) Firmware
10 16 (0.27%) NFS
11 10 (0.17%) Postfix
12 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 6 (0.099%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.099%) RACF
13 6 (0.099%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.099%) Varnish
14 5 (0.083%) GPFS
14 5 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.083%) Snort
Systems Management
1 939 (15.57%) Terraform
2 894 (14.82%) Kubernetes
3 344 (5.70%) Microsoft Intune
4 261 (4.33%) Ansible
5 158 (2.62%) Grafana
6 146 (2.42%) Single Sign-On
7 130 (2.16%) Prometheus
8 109 (1.81%) SCCM
9 73 (1.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.65%) Argo
11 33 (0.55%) Istio
12 28 (0.46%) Puppet
13 27 (0.45%) vCenter Server
14 26 (0.43%) Progress Chef
15 24 (0.40%) Jamf Pro
16 21 (0.35%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
17 17 (0.28%) vRealize
18 16 (0.27%) HP ALM
18 16 (0.27%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,969 (32.65%) Microsoft
2 628 (10.41%) Databricks
3 296 (4.91%) Oracle
4 275 (4.56%) Google
5 261 (4.33%) ServiceNow
6 253 (4.19%) VMware
7 174 (2.89%) SAP
8 163 (2.70%) Cisco
9 158 (2.62%) OpenAI
10 141 (2.34%) Splunk
11 130 (2.16%) CyberArk
12 107 (1.77%) Foundry
13 93 (1.54%) Palo Alto
14 81 (1.34%) Salesforce
15 80 (1.33%) Okta
16 71 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
16 71 (1.18%) IBM
17 66 (1.09%) Citrix
18 63 (1.04%) Informatica
18 63 (1.04%) Red Hat