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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,224 3,743 4,938
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.36% 15.45% 13.40%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.52% 41.52% 42.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,475 2,649 3,632
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -2.68%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 24 47
10th Percentile £27.01 £21.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £52.64 £26.45 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -39.13%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £91.13 £93.61 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% - -41.47%

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 14,303 9,016 11,745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.30% 37.21% 31.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,828 6,286 8,486
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £742 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £518 £525
% change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 459 196 320
10th Percentile £15.87 £15.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.36 £18.04 £15.85
Median hourly rate £46.80 £25.98 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +80.17% +23.69% -34.98%
75th Percentile £68.75 £41.62 £32.88
90th Percentile £81.25 £73.13 £62.00
UK median hourly rate £41.64 £27.35 £21.19
% change year-on-year +52.25% +29.10% -39.47%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 3,325 £537 -2.36% 1,009
North of England +3 848 £500 +5.26% 580
South East +2 822 £500 -4.76% 664
Midlands -2 509 £488 -2.50% 291
North West +3 448 £500 +1.63% 296
South West +6 382 £525 - 254
West Midlands +1 370 £500 -4.76% 160
Yorkshire +7 346 £500 +14.29% 189
East of England +6 148 £550 -5.17% 178
East Midlands +2 129 £450 -3.23% 130
North East -1 63 £525 +7.69% 96
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
1 288 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 173 (2.78%) Apache Spark
2 173 (2.78%) Confluence
3 170 (2.73%) Microsoft Exchange
4 90 (1.45%) Apache
5 85 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (0.34%) IIS
7 18 (0.29%) SAS
8 13 (0.21%) ArcGIS
8 13 (0.21%) Mendix
9 12 (0.19%) Appian
9 12 (0.19%) Camunda
9 12 (0.19%) CMS
9 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
9 12 (0.19%) OpenStack
10 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
11 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 5 (0.080%) BizTalk Server
12 5 (0.080%) Jupyter
12 5 (0.080%) WebLogic
Applications
1 90 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 21 (0.34%) 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
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.032%) Weka
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 91 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
7 5 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.080%) Unit4 Business World
8 4 (0.064%) Cloudability
8 4 (0.064%) Oracle Assets
8 4 (0.064%) Oracle FAH
8 4 (0.064%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.064%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.064%) Shopify
9 3 (0.048%) Elite 3E
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.048%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,152 (34.58%) AWS
2 1,273 (20.45%) Azure DevOps
3 1,148 (18.44%) GCP
4 801 (12.87%) Power Platform
5 768 (12.34%) Entra ID
6 645 (10.36%) Microsoft 365
7 582 (9.35%) GitHub
8 460 (7.39%) Azure Data Factory
9 331 (5.32%) GitHub Actions
10 317 (5.09%) Serverless
11 303 (4.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 251 (4.03%) SaaS
13 236 (3.79%) Azure AKS
14 228 (3.66%) Dynamics 365
15 213 (3.42%) PaaS
15 213 (3.42%) Power Automate
16 206 (3.31%) Azure Monitor
17 175 (2.81%) Azure Functions
18 172 (2.76%) Azure Logic Apps
19 171 (2.75%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 388 (6.23%) Firewall
2 271 (4.35%) DNS
3 227 (3.65%) VPN
4 206 (3.31%) Network Security
5 164 (2.63%) WAN
6 149 (2.39%) DHCP
7 116 (1.86%) LAN
8 85 (1.37%) TCP/IP
9 82 (1.32%) SD-WAN
10 75 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
11 70 (1.12%) VLAN
12 66 (1.06%) Kerberos
13 63 (1.01%) BGP
14 54 (0.87%) OSPF
15 44 (0.71%) SAN
16 40 (0.64%) Wireless
17 38 (0.61%) SSL
18 34 (0.55%) HTTP
19 29 (0.47%) VXLAN
20 28 (0.45%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 558 (8.97%) Power BI
2 370 (5.94%) SQL Server
3 329 (5.29%) Data Warehouse
4 306 (4.92%) Data Lake
5 209 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
6 199 (3.20%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.73%) NoSQL
8 147 (2.36%) Metadata
9 139 (2.23%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.54%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.43%) Big Data
12 88 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 78 (1.25%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.17%) Tableau
15 66 (1.06%) Oracle Database
16 61 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.76%) Star Schema
19 46 (0.74%) Spark SQL
20 43 (0.69%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 464 (7.46%) Git
2 430 (6.91%) JIRA
3 304 (4.88%) Jenkins
4 236 (3.79%) GitLab
5 96 (1.54%) Selenium
6 61 (0.98%) Postman
7 51 (0.82%) Cucumber
7 51 (0.82%) JUnit
8 50 (0.80%) MLflow
9 45 (0.72%) JMeter
10 39 (0.63%) REST Assured
11 37 (0.59%) SonarQube
12 33 (0.53%) Artifactory
13 30 (0.48%) Cypress.io
14 24 (0.39%) Gatling
14 24 (0.39%) Maven
14 24 (0.39%) TestRail
14 24 (0.39%) Visual Studio
14 24 (0.39%) WebDriver
15 23 (0.37%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,617 (25.98%) Social Skills
2 1,176 (18.89%) Finance
3 635 (10.20%) Public Sector
4 587 (9.43%) Analytical Skills
5 360 (5.78%) Banking
6 188 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
7 145 (2.33%) Legal
8 95 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 88 (1.41%) Retail
10 85 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.11%) Financial Institution
11 69 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 64 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
13 63 (1.01%) Investment Banking
14 62 (1.00%) Front Office
14 62 (1.00%) Law
15 61 (0.98%) Marketing
16 52 (0.84%) Telecoms
17 38 (0.61%) Local Government
17 38 (0.61%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,027 (16.50%) Architect
2 763 (12.26%) Developer
3 759 (12.19%) Senior
4 572 (9.19%) Azure Engineer
5 533 (8.56%) Data Engineer
6 460 (7.39%) Lead
7 396 (6.36%) Analyst
8 321 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
9 273 (4.39%) Solutions Architect
10 249 (4.00%) Consultant
11 209 (3.36%) Cloud Engineer
12 197 (3.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 167 (2.68%) Azure Architect
14 162 (2.60%) Security Engineer
15 151 (2.43%) Platform Engineer
16 141 (2.27%) Technical Architect
17 137 (2.20%) Data Architect
18 136 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 135 (2.17%) Business Analyst
20 130 (2.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 467 (7.50%) .NET
2 397 (6.38%) REST
3 252 (4.05%) Kafka
4 250 (4.02%) React
5 227 (3.65%) PySpark
6 194 (3.12%) Node.js
7 178 (2.86%) RESTful
8 173 (2.78%) Spring
9 170 (2.73%) OAuth
10 164 (2.63%) LDAP
11 158 (2.54%) AngularJS
12 140 (2.25%) Spring Boot
13 124 (1.99%) Middleware
14 122 (1.96%) JSON
15 118 (1.90%) SAML
15 118 (1.90%) SOAP
16 115 (1.85%) HTML
17 109 (1.75%) OpenID
18 100 (1.61%) YAML
19 96 (1.54%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 612 (9.83%) Cloud Native
2 249 (4.00%) Onboarding
3 215 (3.45%) Product Ownership
4 178 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
5 163 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
6 159 (2.55%) Data Centre
7 145 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
8 144 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
9 143 (2.30%) Security Posture
10 133 (2.14%) Public Cloud
11 116 (1.86%) AI Agents
12 85 (1.37%) Data Structures
12 85 (1.37%) Replication
13 69 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
14 68 (1.09%) Management Information System
15 57 (0.92%) PKI
16 56 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
16 56 (0.90%) Low-Code
17 50 (0.80%) Virtual Team
18 49 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 703 (11.29%) Windows
2 315 (5.06%) Linux
3 206 (3.31%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.80%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.06%) Unix
6 58 (0.93%) VMS
7 55 (0.88%) Mac OS
8 49 (0.79%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 35 (0.56%) Android
11 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.31%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.14%) AIX
17 8 (0.13%) CentOS
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
19 6 (0.096%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,327 (37.39%) DevOps
2 1,924 (30.91%) CI/CD
3 1,442 (23.17%) Agile
4 941 (15.12%) Analytics
5 929 (14.93%) Problem-Solving
6 883 (14.19%) Infrastructure as Code
7 877 (14.09%) AI
8 837 (13.45%) Migration
9 712 (11.44%) Data Modelling
10 628 (10.09%) Stakeholder Management
11 619 (9.95%) Business Intelligence
11 619 (9.95%) Data Pipeline
12 597 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
13 594 (9.54%) ETL
14 585 (9.40%) Containerisation
15 542 (8.71%) Microservices
16 537 (8.63%) Data Engineering
17 529 (8.50%) Roadmaps
18 506 (8.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 469 (7.54%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,535 (24.66%) Python
2 1,362 (21.88%) SQL
3 666 (10.70%) PowerShell
4 522 (8.39%) Java
5 520 (8.35%) C#
6 368 (5.91%) JavaScript
7 224 (3.60%) Bash
8 220 (3.53%) TypeScript
9 196 (3.15%) Bicep
10 91 (1.46%) Scala
11 84 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 77 (1.24%) Go
13 75 (1.21%) T-SQL
14 52 (0.84%) PL/SQL
15 51 (0.82%) Kusto Query Language
16 44 (0.71%) R
17 36 (0.58%) Shell Script
18 24 (0.39%) C++
19 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,589 (25.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,328 (21.34%) SC Cleared
3 442 (7.10%) Degree
4 351 (5.64%) Azure Certification
5 174 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
6 172 (2.76%) CISSP
7 141 (2.27%) Cisco Certification
7 141 (2.27%) Microsoft Certification
8 135 (2.17%) DV Cleared
9 126 (2.02%) AWS Certification
10 101 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
11 97 (1.56%) CISM
12 67 (1.08%) CCNP
13 61 (0.98%) PMP
14 58 (0.93%) PMI Certification
15 55 (0.88%) TOGAF Certification
16 54 (0.87%) Master's Degree
17 51 (0.82%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 50 (0.80%) ISTQB
19 35 (0.56%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (7.20%) Data Quality
2 333 (5.35%) QA
3 326 (5.24%) GDPR
4 253 (4.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 231 (3.71%) NIST
6 91 (1.46%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.30%) NCSC
8 79 (1.27%) PCI DSS
9 61 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 60 (0.96%) SLA
11 59 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 51 (0.82%) PMO
13 45 (0.72%) GRC
14 34 (0.55%) HIPAA
15 29 (0.47%) WCAG
16 22 (0.35%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 20 (0.32%) ISO 20022
19 17 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 17 (0.27%) PSD2
System Software
1 808 (12.98%) Active Directory
2 688 (11.05%) Docker
3 180 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.75%) Virtual Machines
5 106 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
6 92 (1.48%) Hyper-V
7 53 (0.85%) vSphere
8 34 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.42%) Firmware
10 20 (0.32%) NFS
11 19 (0.31%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.19%) Postfix
13 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.096%) KVM
15 6 (0.096%) RACF
16 5 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.080%) HDFS
16 5 (0.080%) Snort
17 4 (0.064%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 986 (15.84%) Terraform
2 910 (14.62%) Kubernetes
3 332 (5.33%) Microsoft Intune
4 280 (4.50%) Ansible
5 171 (2.75%) Grafana
6 146 (2.35%) Prometheus
7 134 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
8 101 (1.62%) SCCM
9 66 (1.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.56%) Argo
11 34 (0.55%) Istio
12 33 (0.53%) Puppet
13 29 (0.47%) Progress Chef
14 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
15 22 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
16 19 (0.31%) vCenter Server
17 15 (0.24%) HAProxy
17 15 (0.24%) HP ALM
17 15 (0.24%) Kubeflow
17 15 (0.24%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,028 (32.58%) Microsoft
2 622 (9.99%) Databricks
3 276 (4.43%) ServiceNow
4 270 (4.34%) Oracle
5 258 (4.15%) Google
6 252 (4.05%) VMware
7 182 (2.92%) SAP
8 160 (2.57%) Cisco
9 158 (2.54%) OpenAI
10 140 (2.25%) Splunk
11 136 (2.19%) CyberArk
12 103 (1.65%) Palo Alto
13 102 (1.64%) Foundry
14 92 (1.48%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.27%) Okta
16 70 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
17 69 (1.11%) Citrix
18 65 (1.04%) Dynatrace
19 63 (1.01%) Informatica
20 60 (0.96%) Zscaler