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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,065 4,098 4,936
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.63% 14.90% 14.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.61% 39.89% 43.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,951 2,844 3,611
10th Percentile £374 £350 £350
25th Percentile £437 £423 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £747 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 33 32
10th Percentile £19.50 £20.30 £17.84
25th Percentile £31.25 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -40.32%
75th Percentile £79.50 £76.25 £58.00
90th Percentile £100.68 £100.00 £74.47
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -40.32%

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 15,836 10,274 11,391
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.04% 37.35% 33.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,572 6,952 8,104
10th Percentile £325 £311 £313
25th Percentile £423 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.49% -2.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £519 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 565 268 254
10th Percentile £16.62 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.10
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% +14.32% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.48 £49.69
90th Percentile £84.50 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £27.38 £22.50
% change year-on-year +29.68% +21.67% -35.71%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 3,698 £550 - 1,401
North of England +7 1,020 £500 +3.09% 595
South East +2 900 £525 +5.00% 657
Midlands +4 640 £496 +0.25% 300
North West +6 534 £500 +2.30% 331
West Midlands +2 485 £494 -5.95% 186
South West +7 444 £538 +7.50% 251
Yorkshire +4 407 £500 +5.26% 179
East of England +3 180 £535 -2.73% 161
East Midlands +11 143 £488 +5.41% 114
North East -2 94 £520 +6.67% 98
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
1 378 (5.35%) SharePoint
2 243 (3.44%) Confluence
3 179 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 162 (2.29%) Apache Spark
5 122 (1.73%) Apache Airflow
6 106 (1.50%) Apache
7 39 (0.55%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 15 (0.21%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
14 7 (0.099%) nginx
14 7 (0.099%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.099%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.085%) Camunda
15 6 (0.085%) Documentum
15 6 (0.085%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.085%) Mendix
Applications
1 107 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 67 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
4 31 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.41%) Chatbot
6 26 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
8 10 (0.14%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
11 4 (0.057%) Notion
12 3 (0.042%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.014%) PTC Creo
14 1 (0.014%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 98 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Maximo
5 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
5 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.099%) Shopify
7 6 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.071%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.057%) Adobe Campaign
9 4 (0.057%) Endur
9 4 (0.057%) Ripple
9 4 (0.057%) SAP MM
9 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,503 (35.43%) AWS
2 1,473 (20.85%) Azure DevOps
3 1,198 (16.96%) GCP
4 913 (12.92%) Entra ID
5 885 (12.53%) Power Platform
6 715 (10.12%) Microsoft 365
7 657 (9.30%) GitHub
8 428 (6.06%) Azure Data Factory
9 398 (5.63%) GitHub Actions
10 308 (4.36%) Serverless
11 295 (4.18%) SaaS
12 287 (4.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 258 (3.65%) Azure AKS
14 249 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
15 248 (3.51%) Power Automate
16 226 (3.20%) Dynamics 365
16 226 (3.20%) PaaS
17 223 (3.16%) PowerApps
18 210 (2.97%) Snowflake
19 195 (2.76%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 475 (6.72%) Firewall
2 345 (4.88%) DNS
3 288 (4.08%) VPN
4 256 (3.62%) Network Security
5 186 (2.63%) WAN
6 179 (2.53%) DHCP
7 154 (2.18%) TCP/IP
8 116 (1.64%) LAN
9 111 (1.57%) BGP
10 91 (1.29%) OSPF
10 91 (1.29%) SD-WAN
11 87 (1.23%) VLAN
12 72 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.86%) SSL
14 56 (0.79%) SAN
15 53 (0.75%) Wireless
16 45 (0.64%) IPsec
16 45 (0.64%) VXLAN
17 39 (0.55%) Internet
18 38 (0.54%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 632 (8.95%) Power BI
2 420 (5.94%) SQL Server
3 364 (5.15%) Data Warehouse
4 309 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 253 (3.58%) PostgreSQL
6 184 (2.60%) NoSQL
7 179 (2.53%) Metadata
8 176 (2.49%) Azure SQL Database
9 124 (1.76%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.64%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.26%) Big Data
12 84 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 72 (1.02%) MongoDB
14 66 (0.93%) Tableau
15 62 (0.88%) MySQL
16 59 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.78%) BigQuery
18 52 (0.74%) Oracle Database
18 52 (0.74%) Star Schema
19 50 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 530 (7.50%) Git
2 529 (7.49%) JIRA
3 346 (4.90%) Jenkins
4 268 (3.79%) GitLab
5 102 (1.44%) Selenium
6 61 (0.86%) JUnit
7 52 (0.74%) JMeter
8 51 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.71%) Postman
10 46 (0.65%) SonarQube
11 42 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 39 (0.55%) Maven
13 38 (0.54%) WebDriver
14 35 (0.50%) REST Assured
15 34 (0.48%) MLflow
15 34 (0.48%) Visual Studio
16 29 (0.41%) Gradle
17 27 (0.38%) Bitbucket
17 27 (0.38%) Gatling
18 24 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,787 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 1,389 (19.66%) Finance
3 770 (10.90%) Public Sector
4 692 (9.79%) Analytical Skills
5 400 (5.66%) Banking
6 195 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 177 (2.51%) Retail
8 175 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 153 (2.17%) Legal
10 90 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
11 83 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 80 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
13 72 (1.02%) Law
14 70 (0.99%) Manufacturing
15 65 (0.92%) Financial Institution
16 64 (0.91%) Investment Banking
16 64 (0.91%) Marketing
17 63 (0.89%) Front Office
18 57 (0.81%) Military
19 55 (0.78%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,257 (17.79%) Architect
2 899 (12.72%) Senior
3 841 (11.90%) Developer
4 625 (8.85%) Azure Engineer
5 582 (8.24%) Lead
6 546 (7.73%) Data Engineer
7 430 (6.09%) Analyst
8 388 (5.49%) Solutions Architect
9 332 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
10 308 (4.36%) Cloud Engineer
11 273 (3.86%) Consultant
11 273 (3.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 213 (3.01%) Data Architect
13 189 (2.68%) Platform Engineer
14 177 (2.51%) Security Engineer
15 175 (2.48%) Azure Architect
16 162 (2.29%) Project Manager
17 159 (2.25%) Business Analyst
17 159 (2.25%) Technical Architect
18 156 (2.21%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 534 (7.56%) .NET
2 488 (6.91%) REST
3 275 (3.89%) Kafka
4 267 (3.78%) React
5 225 (3.18%) PySpark
6 224 (3.17%) RESTful
7 212 (3.00%) OAuth
8 165 (2.34%) Spring
9 163 (2.31%) JSON
10 158 (2.24%) Node.js
11 154 (2.18%) AngularJS
12 137 (1.94%) SAML
13 133 (1.88%) OpenID
14 131 (1.85%) Spring Boot
15 124 (1.76%) .NET Framework
16 121 (1.71%) HTML
17 120 (1.70%) OAuth2
18 113 (1.60%) Middleware
19 112 (1.59%) SOAP
20 100 (1.42%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 755 (10.69%) Cloud Native
2 342 (4.84%) Onboarding
3 289 (4.09%) Product Ownership
4 236 (3.34%) Distributed Systems
5 227 (3.21%) Data Centre
6 225 (3.18%) Hybrid Cloud
7 203 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
8 199 (2.82%) AI Agents
9 164 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
10 155 (2.19%) Security Posture
11 126 (1.78%) Data Structures
12 122 (1.73%) Public Cloud
13 113 (1.60%) Management Information System
14 94 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
15 91 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
16 89 (1.26%) PKI
17 76 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
18 74 (1.05%) Replication
19 68 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
20 60 (0.85%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 845 (11.96%) Windows
2 399 (5.65%) Linux
3 280 (3.96%) Windows Server
4 109 (1.54%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.06%) Unix
6 74 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 67 (0.95%) Android
8 65 (0.92%) Mac OS
9 59 (0.84%) Apple iOS
10 45 (0.64%) VMS
11 43 (0.61%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
16 11 (0.16%) CentOS
17 9 (0.13%) Debian
18 6 (0.085%) CoreOS
19 5 (0.071%) AIX
19 5 (0.071%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,567 (36.33%) DevOps
2 2,167 (30.67%) CI/CD
3 1,772 (25.08%) Agile
4 1,132 (16.02%) AI
5 1,085 (15.36%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,033 (14.62%) Migration
7 1,028 (14.55%) Analytics
8 1,001 (14.17%) Stakeholder Management
9 940 (13.31%) Problem-Solving
10 805 (11.39%) Data Modelling
11 769 (10.88%) Continuous Improvement
12 702 (9.94%) Data Pipeline
13 681 (9.64%) Business Intelligence
14 674 (9.54%) Roadmaps
15 669 (9.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 631 (8.93%) Containerisation
17 605 (8.56%) Microservices
18 603 (8.54%) ETL
19 595 (8.42%) Data Engineering
20 559 (7.91%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,648 (23.33%) Python
2 1,408 (19.93%) SQL
3 731 (10.35%) PowerShell
4 582 (8.24%) Java
5 531 (7.52%) C#
6 402 (5.69%) JavaScript
7 313 (4.43%) Bash
8 272 (3.85%) Bicep
9 246 (3.48%) TypeScript
10 93 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 81 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.91%) Go
13 51 (0.72%) Scala
14 47 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 40 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 36 (0.51%) Kotlin
17 33 (0.47%) R
18 29 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 28 (0.40%) Groovy
20 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,781 (25.21%) Security Cleared
2 1,444 (20.44%) SC Cleared
3 523 (7.40%) Degree
4 389 (5.51%) Azure Certification
5 238 (3.37%) DV Cleared
6 221 (3.13%) CISSP
7 195 (2.76%) Microsoft Certification
8 183 (2.59%) Cisco Certification
9 176 (2.49%) AWS Certification
10 170 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
11 156 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
12 105 (1.49%) CISM
13 90 (1.27%) CCNP
14 72 (1.02%) PMP
15 69 (0.98%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 52 (0.74%) Master's Degree
18 50 (0.71%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.61%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 498 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 376 (5.32%) QA
3 283 (4.01%) GDPR
4 250 (3.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 249 (3.52%) NIST
6 167 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 95 (1.34%) SLA
8 93 (1.32%) NCSC
9 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
10 68 (0.96%) GRC
10 68 (0.96%) WCAG
11 66 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
12 53 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 50 (0.71%) PMO
14 29 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 29 (0.41%) HIPAA
15 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
16 22 (0.31%) NIST 800
17 15 (0.21%) COBIT
17 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 872 (12.34%) Active Directory
2 750 (10.62%) Docker
3 191 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 133 (1.88%) Virtual Desktop
4 133 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
5 94 (1.33%) Hyper-V
6 62 (0.88%) vSphere
7 50 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
8 35 (0.50%) VMware NSX
9 29 (0.41%) Firmware
10 23 (0.33%) NFS
11 16 (0.23%) Postfix
12 13 (0.18%) IAG
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.099%) Varnish
15 6 (0.085%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.071%) BitLocker
16 5 (0.071%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.057%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,158 (16.39%) Terraform
2 1,023 (14.48%) Kubernetes
3 385 (5.45%) Microsoft Intune
4 360 (5.10%) Ansible
5 216 (3.06%) Grafana
6 178 (2.52%) Prometheus
7 129 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
8 103 (1.46%) SCCM
9 52 (0.74%) Progress Chef
10 50 (0.71%) Argo
11 44 (0.62%) Puppet
12 40 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
13 36 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 32 (0.45%) FortiGate
15 28 (0.40%) Istio
16 20 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) Packer
18 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
19 16 (0.23%) SCOM
20 13 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,349 (33.25%) Microsoft
2 655 (9.27%) Databricks
3 361 (5.11%) ServiceNow
4 280 (3.96%) VMware
5 276 (3.91%) Oracle
6 274 (3.88%) Google
7 215 (3.04%) Cisco
8 197 (2.79%) SAP
9 165 (2.34%) OpenAI
10 160 (2.26%) Splunk
11 142 (2.01%) Palo Alto
12 136 (1.92%) CyberArk
13 132 (1.87%) Salesforce
14 119 (1.68%) Foundry
15 101 (1.43%) Dynatrace
16 91 (1.29%) Zscaler
17 70 (0.99%) Okta
18 68 (0.96%) Fortinet
18 68 (0.96%) Informatica
19 63 (0.89%) Red Hat