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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,190 3,737 4,972
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.33% 15.35% 13.37%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.24% 41.22% 41.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,467 2,659 3,647
10th Percentile £363 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £640
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK median daily rate £522 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.57% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 24 49
10th Percentile £26.37 £21.06 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.63 £26.09 £22.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £44.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.94% +26.43% -36.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £88.40 £93.61 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £33.25 £35.00
% change year-on-year +72.93% -5.00% -36.36%

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 14,317 9,065 11,854
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.46% 37.24% 31.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,856 6,343 8,545
10th Percentile £316 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 449 194 321
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.03 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £46.00 £25.50 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +80.39% +22.77% -35.70%
75th Percentile £67.84 £40.50 £32.50
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.38 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £27.35 £21.00
% change year-on-year +56.07% +30.24% -40.00%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 3,320 £535 -2.73% 834
North of England +3 841 £500 +5.26% 539
South East +2 801 £500 -4.76% 618
Midlands -1 511 £488 -2.50% 291
North West +3 448 £500 - 275
South West +5 383 £525 - 254
West Midlands 0 370 £500 -4.76% 162
Yorkshire +2 343 £500 +17.65% 176
East of England +6 151 £550 -5.17% 202
East Midlands +2 131 £450 -4.26% 128
North East -1 59 £525 +3.70% 89
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
1 287 (4.64%) SharePoint
2 177 (2.86%) Apache Spark
2 177 (2.86%) Microsoft Exchange
3 167 (2.70%) Confluence
4 95 (1.53%) Apache
5 85 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (0.34%) IIS
7 18 (0.29%) SAS
8 14 (0.23%) CMS
9 13 (0.21%) Appian
9 13 (0.21%) ArcGIS
9 13 (0.21%) Camunda
9 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
9 13 (0.21%) Mendix
10 11 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 5 (0.081%) Jupyter
13 5 (0.081%) nginx
13 5 (0.081%) Umbraco
Applications
1 97 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 81 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 19 (0.31%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.081%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.065%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.065%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.048%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.048%) Weka
11 2 (0.032%) Revit
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 93 (1.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.18%) Maximo
3 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
5 9 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
6 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
7 5 (0.081%) Cloudability
7 5 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.065%) Oracle FAH
8 4 (0.065%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.065%) Shopify
8 4 (0.065%) Unit4 Business World
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,131 (34.43%) AWS
2 1,272 (20.55%) Azure DevOps
3 1,156 (18.68%) GCP
4 803 (12.97%) Power Platform
5 771 (12.46%) Entra ID
6 654 (10.57%) Microsoft 365
7 578 (9.34%) GitHub
8 464 (7.50%) Azure Data Factory
9 331 (5.35%) GitHub Actions
10 327 (5.28%) Serverless
11 302 (4.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 248 (4.01%) SaaS
13 241 (3.89%) Azure AKS
14 227 (3.67%) Dynamics 365
15 214 (3.46%) Azure Monitor
16 213 (3.44%) Power Automate
17 209 (3.38%) PaaS
18 185 (2.99%) Azure Functions
19 178 (2.88%) Azure Logic Apps
20 174 (2.81%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 394 (6.37%) Firewall
2 269 (4.35%) DNS
3 235 (3.80%) VPN
4 208 (3.36%) Network Security
5 161 (2.60%) WAN
6 145 (2.34%) DHCP
7 116 (1.87%) LAN
8 85 (1.37%) TCP/IP
9 79 (1.28%) SD-WAN
9 79 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
10 70 (1.13%) VLAN
11 66 (1.07%) Kerberos
12 59 (0.95%) BGP
13 52 (0.84%) OSPF
14 42 (0.68%) SAN
15 38 (0.61%) Wireless
16 34 (0.55%) SSL
17 33 (0.53%) HTTP
18 31 (0.50%) Internet
19 28 (0.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 561 (9.06%) Power BI
2 372 (6.01%) SQL Server
3 330 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
4 309 (4.99%) Data Lake
5 213 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 205 (3.31%) Azure SQL Database
7 171 (2.76%) NoSQL
8 146 (2.36%) Metadata
9 138 (2.23%) Delta Lake
10 95 (1.53%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.49%) Big Data
12 89 (1.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 78 (1.26%) MongoDB
14 76 (1.23%) Tableau
15 64 (1.03%) Oracle Database
16 58 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
17 56 (0.90%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.76%) Star Schema
19 46 (0.74%) MySQL
19 46 (0.74%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 456 (7.37%) Git
2 424 (6.85%) JIRA
3 302 (4.88%) Jenkins
4 230 (3.72%) GitLab
5 101 (1.63%) Selenium
6 64 (1.03%) Postman
7 56 (0.90%) JUnit
8 55 (0.89%) Cucumber
9 51 (0.82%) MLflow
10 47 (0.76%) JMeter
11 42 (0.68%) REST Assured
12 34 (0.55%) Artifactory
12 34 (0.55%) SonarQube
13 33 (0.53%) Cypress.io
14 25 (0.40%) TestRail
14 25 (0.40%) WebDriver
15 24 (0.39%) Bitbucket
15 24 (0.39%) Gatling
16 23 (0.37%) Visual Studio
17 21 (0.34%) Maven
General
1 1,634 (26.40%) Social Skills
2 1,153 (18.63%) Finance
3 652 (10.53%) Public Sector
4 590 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
5 350 (5.65%) Banking
6 195 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
7 144 (2.33%) Legal
8 95 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 86 (1.39%) Retail
10 84 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 67 (1.08%) Financial Institution
13 66 (1.07%) Marketing
14 65 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
15 62 (1.00%) Law
16 61 (0.99%) Front Office
17 60 (0.97%) Investment Banking
18 54 (0.87%) Telecoms
19 44 (0.71%) Local Government
20 37 (0.60%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,014 (16.38%) Architect
2 784 (12.67%) Developer
3 749 (12.10%) Senior
4 569 (9.19%) Azure Engineer
5 533 (8.61%) Data Engineer
6 463 (7.48%) Lead
7 387 (6.25%) Analyst
8 319 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 263 (4.25%) Solutions Architect
10 245 (3.96%) Consultant
11 202 (3.26%) Cloud Engineer
12 194 (3.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 163 (2.63%) Azure Architect
14 154 (2.49%) Security Engineer
15 153 (2.47%) Platform Engineer
16 137 (2.21%) Data Architect
17 136 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 135 (2.18%) Technical Architect
19 130 (2.10%) Senior Developer
20 128 (2.07%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 465 (7.51%) .NET
2 396 (6.40%) REST
3 259 (4.18%) React
4 247 (3.99%) Kafka
5 224 (3.62%) PySpark
6 202 (3.26%) Node.js
7 183 (2.96%) RESTful
8 177 (2.86%) Spring
9 171 (2.76%) OAuth
10 159 (2.57%) LDAP
11 156 (2.52%) AngularJS
12 140 (2.26%) Spring Boot
13 122 (1.97%) JSON
14 120 (1.94%) SAML
15 118 (1.91%) Middleware
15 118 (1.91%) SOAP
16 117 (1.89%) HTML
17 109 (1.76%) OpenID
18 99 (1.60%) PyTorch
19 98 (1.58%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 605 (9.77%) Cloud Native
2 245 (3.96%) Onboarding
3 217 (3.51%) Product Ownership
4 178 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
5 162 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
6 151 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
7 150 (2.42%) Security Posture
8 149 (2.41%) Data Centre
9 145 (2.34%) Distributed Systems
10 136 (2.20%) Public Cloud
11 113 (1.83%) AI Agents
12 83 (1.34%) Data Structures
12 83 (1.34%) Replication
13 71 (1.15%) Management Information System
14 69 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
15 56 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
15 56 (0.90%) PKI
16 54 (0.87%) Low-Code
17 50 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
18 46 (0.74%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 693 (11.20%) Windows
2 311 (5.02%) Linux
3 212 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.81%) Windows 10
5 63 (1.02%) Unix
6 60 (0.97%) VMS
7 54 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 46 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.71%) Apple iOS
10 33 (0.53%) Android
11 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.31%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.13%) AIX
17 7 (0.11%) CentOS
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.097%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.097%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,320 (37.48%) DevOps
2 1,899 (30.68%) CI/CD
3 1,442 (23.30%) Agile
4 939 (15.17%) Analytics
5 937 (15.14%) Problem-Solving
6 872 (14.09%) AI
7 869 (14.04%) Infrastructure as Code
8 837 (13.52%) Migration
9 709 (11.45%) Data Modelling
10 623 (10.06%) Business Intelligence
11 619 (10.00%) Data Pipeline
12 614 (9.92%) Stakeholder Management
13 597 (9.64%) Continuous Improvement
14 586 (9.47%) ETL
15 584 (9.43%) Containerisation
16 545 (8.80%) Microservices
17 538 (8.69%) Data Engineering
18 514 (8.30%) Roadmaps
19 510 (8.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 471 (7.61%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,547 (24.99%) Python
2 1,368 (22.10%) SQL
3 666 (10.76%) PowerShell
4 533 (8.61%) Java
5 523 (8.45%) C#
6 384 (6.20%) JavaScript
7 229 (3.70%) TypeScript
8 217 (3.51%) Bash
9 197 (3.18%) Bicep
10 94 (1.52%) Scala
11 81 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 80 (1.29%) Go
13 72 (1.16%) T-SQL
14 58 (0.94%) Kusto Query Language
15 57 (0.92%) PL/SQL
16 42 (0.68%) R
17 36 (0.58%) Shell Script
18 21 (0.34%) C++
19 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,573 (25.41%) Security Cleared
2 1,315 (21.24%) SC Cleared
3 450 (7.27%) Degree
4 350 (5.65%) Azure Certification
5 183 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 166 (2.68%) CISSP
7 142 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 135 (2.18%) Cisco Certification
9 124 (2.00%) DV Cleared
10 119 (1.92%) AWS Certification
11 103 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
12 96 (1.55%) CISM
13 68 (1.10%) CCNP
14 63 (1.02%) PMP
15 60 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 55 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
17 54 (0.87%) Master's Degree
18 50 (0.81%) ISTQB
19 45 (0.73%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 35 (0.57%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (7.19%) Data Quality
2 335 (5.41%) GDPR
3 334 (5.40%) QA
4 254 (4.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 227 (3.67%) NIST
6 92 (1.49%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.31%) NCSC
8 79 (1.28%) PCI DSS
9 60 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 59 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
11 57 (0.92%) SLA
12 48 (0.78%) PMO
13 42 (0.68%) GRC
14 34 (0.55%) HIPAA
15 29 (0.47%) WCAG
16 22 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 20 (0.32%) ISO 20022
18 18 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 15 (0.24%) PSD2
System Software
1 809 (13.07%) Active Directory
2 694 (11.21%) Docker
3 171 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
5 99 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
6 90 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 54 (0.87%) vSphere
8 33 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
9 25 (0.40%) Firmware
10 19 (0.31%) VMware NSX
11 18 (0.29%) NFS
12 11 (0.18%) Postfix
13 8 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.097%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.097%) RACF
14 6 (0.097%) Varnish
15 5 (0.081%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 5 (0.081%) HDFS
15 5 (0.081%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.081%) Snort
Systems Management
1 979 (15.82%) Terraform
2 918 (14.83%) Kubernetes
3 337 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 271 (4.38%) Ansible
5 172 (2.78%) Grafana
6 144 (2.33%) Prometheus
7 137 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.70%) SCCM
9 65 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.57%) Istio
11 33 (0.53%) Argo
11 33 (0.53%) Puppet
12 27 (0.44%) Progress Chef
13 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
14 21 (0.34%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
16 17 (0.27%) HP ALM
16 17 (0.27%) Kubeflow
17 15 (0.24%) linkerd
18 14 (0.23%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,041 (32.97%) Microsoft
2 621 (10.03%) Databricks
3 277 (4.47%) Oracle
4 274 (4.43%) ServiceNow
5 270 (4.36%) Google
6 247 (3.99%) VMware
7 181 (2.92%) SAP
8 161 (2.60%) OpenAI
9 154 (2.49%) Cisco
10 139 (2.25%) Splunk
11 130 (2.10%) CyberArk
12 104 (1.68%) Foundry
13 94 (1.52%) Palo Alto
14 92 (1.49%) Salesforce
15 81 (1.31%) Okta
16 68 (1.10%) Citrix
17 67 (1.08%) BeyondTrust
18 63 (1.02%) Dynatrace
19 61 (0.99%) Informatica
20 58 (0.94%) IBM