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 5 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,446 3,729 4,992
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.37% 15.48% 13.57%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.80% 41.04% 42.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,589 2,608 3,682
10th Percentile £363 £350 £351
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £548
Median % change year-on-year - -4.11% -2.67%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £521 £538
% change year-on-year +0.72% -3.02% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 145 25 46
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.98 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.75 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.75% +14.29% -44.44%
75th Percentile £72.50 £76.25 £61.19
90th Percentile £99.51 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
% change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -44.44%

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 14,717 9,086 11,765
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.08% 37.73% 31.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,002 6,201 8,458
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.97% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £748
UK median daily rate £510 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 510 218 323
10th Percentile £15.74 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.57 £17.88 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.28 £25.26 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +59.49% +18.18% -38.94%
75th Percentile £68.75 £37.69 £39.50
90th Percentile £81.35 £68.75 £69.90
UK median hourly rate £35.96 £28.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +28.41% +30.23% -41.89%

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 5 June 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 5 June 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 5 June 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 3,429 £540 -1.82% 1,307
North of England +5 928 £500 +5.26% 655
South East +3 824 £500 - 728
Midlands +1 523 £500 +2.09% 355
North West +4 469 £500 +5.26% 372
South West +5 398 £525 +0.48% 333
Yorkshire +8 384 £500 +8.11% 178
West Midlands +1 383 £500 -4.76% 230
East of England +5 154 £550 -5.17% 218
East Midlands +2 130 £465 +0.54% 125
North East +5 87 £525 +5.00% 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
1 315 (4.89%) SharePoint
2 174 (2.70%) Confluence
3 171 (2.65%) Apache Spark
3 171 (2.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 102 (1.58%) Apache Airflow
5 97 (1.50%) Apache
6 30 (0.47%) SAS
7 23 (0.36%) IIS
8 18 (0.28%) CMS
9 15 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
10 12 (0.19%) Appian
11 11 (0.17%) Camunda
11 11 (0.17%) Mendix
11 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.16%) HCL Notes
13 9 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.11%) nginx
14 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 6 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 86 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 6 (0.093%) CPLEX
10 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.078%) PTC Creo
10 5 (0.078%) Revit
11 4 (0.062%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.062%) Notion
11 4 (0.062%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.016%) InDesign
13 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.016%) Sketch
13 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 92 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.093%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.093%) Shopify
7 6 (0.093%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.078%) NEC Housing
8 5 (0.078%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.078%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.078%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.062%) Endur
9 4 (0.062%) Magento
9 4 (0.062%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.062%) R3 Corda
9 4 (0.062%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,228 (34.56%) AWS
2 1,298 (20.14%) Azure DevOps
3 1,107 (17.17%) GCP
4 819 (12.71%) Entra ID
5 812 (12.60%) Power Platform
6 686 (10.64%) Microsoft 365
7 584 (9.06%) GitHub
8 444 (6.89%) Azure Data Factory
9 342 (5.31%) GitHub Actions
10 310 (4.81%) Serverless
11 286 (4.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 262 (4.06%) SaaS
13 231 (3.58%) Azure AKS
14 219 (3.40%) PaaS
15 214 (3.32%) Dynamics 365
16 213 (3.30%) Power Automate
17 199 (3.09%) Azure Monitor
18 178 (2.76%) IaaS
19 177 (2.75%) Snowflake
20 171 (2.65%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 394 (6.11%) Firewall
2 294 (4.56%) DNS
3 235 (3.65%) VPN
4 217 (3.37%) Network Security
5 179 (2.78%) WAN
6 161 (2.50%) DHCP
7 115 (1.78%) LAN
8 93 (1.44%) TCP/IP
9 92 (1.43%) SD-WAN
10 79 (1.23%) BGP
11 70 (1.09%) VLAN
11 70 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
12 67 (1.04%) OSPF
13 61 (0.95%) Kerberos
14 48 (0.74%) SAN
15 43 (0.67%) VXLAN
16 40 (0.62%) SSL
17 39 (0.61%) Wireless
18 32 (0.50%) IPsec
19 30 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 556 (8.63%) Power BI
2 390 (6.05%) SQL Server
3 324 (5.03%) Data Warehouse
4 313 (4.86%) Data Lake
5 220 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 188 (2.92%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.64%) NoSQL
8 140 (2.17%) Metadata
9 137 (2.13%) Delta Lake
10 98 (1.52%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.41%) Big Data
12 86 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.16%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.13%) Tableau
15 61 (0.95%) Snowflake Schema
16 60 (0.93%) Oracle Database
17 55 (0.85%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.73%) Spark SQL
19 44 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
19 44 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 451 (7.00%) Git
2 437 (6.78%) JIRA
3 297 (4.61%) Jenkins
4 247 (3.83%) GitLab
5 100 (1.55%) Selenium
6 60 (0.93%) Postman
7 54 (0.84%) JMeter
8 52 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 49 (0.76%) JUnit
10 42 (0.65%) MLflow
10 42 (0.65%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 30 (0.47%) Artifactory
12 30 (0.47%) Cypress.io
12 30 (0.47%) WebDriver
13 27 (0.42%) Maven
13 27 (0.42%) Visual Studio
14 25 (0.39%) Gatling
15 24 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
16 22 (0.34%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,639 (25.43%) Social Skills
2 1,248 (19.36%) Finance
3 643 (9.98%) Public Sector
4 590 (9.15%) Analytical Skills
5 365 (5.66%) Banking
6 191 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
7 149 (2.31%) Legal
8 118 (1.83%) Retail
9 113 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 87 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
11 70 (1.09%) Investment Banking
12 65 (1.01%) Financial Institution
13 64 (0.99%) Front Office
14 62 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
15 61 (0.95%) Law
16 55 (0.85%) Marketing
16 55 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
17 44 (0.68%) Telecoms
18 39 (0.61%) Military
19 38 (0.59%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,117 (17.33%) Architect
2 788 (12.22%) Senior
3 752 (11.67%) Developer
4 573 (8.89%) Azure Engineer
5 517 (8.02%) Data Engineer
6 493 (7.65%) Lead
7 395 (6.13%) Analyst
8 323 (5.01%) DevOps Engineer
9 314 (4.87%) Solutions Architect
10 263 (4.08%) Consultant
11 232 (3.60%) Cloud Engineer
12 229 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 178 (2.76%) Security Engineer
14 174 (2.70%) Azure Architect
15 171 (2.65%) Data Architect
16 155 (2.40%) Platform Engineer
17 145 (2.25%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 144 (2.23%) Technical Architect
19 142 (2.20%) Business Analyst
20 140 (2.17%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 495 (7.68%) .NET
2 428 (6.64%) REST
3 262 (4.06%) React
4 237 (3.68%) Kafka
5 221 (3.43%) PySpark
6 192 (2.98%) RESTful
7 186 (2.89%) OAuth
8 177 (2.75%) Node.js
9 167 (2.59%) LDAP
10 164 (2.54%) Spring
11 159 (2.47%) AngularJS
12 133 (2.06%) Spring Boot
13 129 (2.00%) JSON
14 123 (1.91%) SAML
15 121 (1.88%) SOAP
16 119 (1.85%) OpenID
17 117 (1.82%) Middleware
18 112 (1.74%) HTML
19 100 (1.55%) YAML
20 97 (1.50%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 653 (10.13%) Cloud Native
2 268 (4.16%) Onboarding
3 230 (3.57%) Product Ownership
4 197 (3.06%) Data Centre
4 197 (3.06%) Hybrid Cloud
5 169 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
6 161 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
7 158 (2.45%) Security Posture
8 148 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
9 137 (2.13%) Public Cloud
10 126 (1.95%) AI Agents
11 87 (1.35%) Data Structures
12 84 (1.30%) Replication
13 79 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
14 74 (1.15%) Management Information System
15 64 (0.99%) PKI
16 62 (0.96%) Enterprise Cloud
17 59 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
18 57 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
19 56 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 757 (11.74%) Windows
2 326 (5.06%) Linux
3 230 (3.57%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.78%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.01%) Mac OS
5 65 (1.01%) Unix
6 61 (0.95%) Apple iOS
7 59 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 55 (0.85%) VMS
9 49 (0.76%) Android
10 27 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 26 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 15 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
14 12 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.17%) CentOS
16 10 (0.16%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.093%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.093%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,376 (36.86%) DevOps
2 1,978 (30.69%) CI/CD
3 1,467 (22.76%) Agile
4 940 (14.58%) Analytics
5 939 (14.57%) Infrastructure as Code
6 938 (14.55%) AI
7 912 (14.15%) Migration
7 912 (14.15%) Problem-Solving
8 724 (11.23%) Data Modelling
9 691 (10.72%) Stakeholder Management
10 635 (9.85%) Data Pipeline
11 624 (9.68%) Continuous Improvement
12 608 (9.43%) Business Intelligence
12 608 (9.43%) ETL
13 599 (9.29%) Roadmaps
14 559 (8.67%) Containerisation
15 548 (8.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 543 (8.42%) Microservices
17 536 (8.32%) Data Engineering
18 478 (7.42%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,508 (23.39%) Python
2 1,367 (21.21%) SQL
3 682 (10.58%) PowerShell
4 536 (8.32%) Java
5 518 (8.04%) C#
6 357 (5.54%) JavaScript
7 225 (3.49%) TypeScript
8 220 (3.41%) Bash
9 205 (3.18%) Bicep
10 82 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 78 (1.21%) Scala
11 78 (1.21%) T-SQL
12 69 (1.07%) Go
13 43 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
14 38 (0.59%) Shell Script
15 34 (0.53%) PL/SQL
16 31 (0.48%) R
17 24 (0.37%) Kotlin
18 22 (0.34%) C++
19 14 (0.22%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,608 (24.95%) Security Cleared
2 1,348 (20.91%) SC Cleared
3 461 (7.15%) Degree
4 362 (5.62%) Azure Certification
5 203 (3.15%) CISSP
6 174 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
7 157 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
8 155 (2.40%) DV Cleared
9 147 (2.28%) Microsoft Certification
10 133 (2.06%) AWS Certification
11 118 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
12 109 (1.69%) CISM
13 74 (1.15%) CCNP
14 69 (1.07%) PMP
15 62 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 60 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 48 (0.74%) ISTQB
17 48 (0.74%) Master's Degree
18 46 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
19 39 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 452 (7.01%) Data Quality
2 335 (5.20%) QA
3 306 (4.75%) GDPR
4 252 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 237 (3.68%) NIST
6 112 (1.74%) Accessibility
7 85 (1.32%) SLA
8 82 (1.27%) NCSC
9 73 (1.13%) PCI DSS
10 67 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
11 60 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 46 (0.71%) GRC
13 45 (0.70%) WCAG
14 43 (0.67%) PMO
15 34 (0.53%) HIPAA
16 26 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.25%) ISO 20022
19 15 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 839 (13.02%) Active Directory
2 667 (10.35%) Docker
3 194 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 113 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
5 105 (1.63%) Virtual Machines
6 94 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.96%) vSphere
8 50 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.42%) Firmware
9 27 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.29%) NFS
11 17 (0.26%) Postfix
12 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.12%) Varnish
14 7 (0.11%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.093%) KVM
15 6 (0.093%) RACF
16 5 (0.078%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.078%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,006 (15.61%) Terraform
2 901 (13.98%) Kubernetes
3 356 (5.52%) Microsoft Intune
4 293 (4.55%) Ansible
5 177 (2.75%) Grafana
6 152 (2.36%) Prometheus
7 146 (2.26%) Single Sign-On
8 94 (1.46%) SCCM
9 72 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.54%) Progress Chef
11 34 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.51%) Argo
12 33 (0.51%) Puppet
13 31 (0.48%) Istio
14 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
15 24 (0.37%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.25%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.23%) Packer
19 14 (0.22%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,099 (32.56%) Microsoft
2 629 (9.76%) Databricks
3 294 (4.56%) ServiceNow
4 265 (4.11%) VMware
5 250 (3.88%) Oracle
6 236 (3.66%) Google
7 188 (2.92%) SAP
8 174 (2.70%) Cisco
9 156 (2.42%) OpenAI
10 137 (2.13%) Splunk
11 135 (2.09%) CyberArk
12 123 (1.91%) Palo Alto
13 103 (1.60%) Foundry
14 101 (1.57%) Salesforce
15 88 (1.37%) Okta
16 73 (1.13%) Dynatrace
17 67 (1.04%) Citrix
18 63 (0.98%) BeyondTrust
19 61 (0.95%) Red Hat
19 61 (0.95%) Zscaler