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

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,688 3,845 5,154
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.38% 15.10% 13.80%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.91% 40.06% 42.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,718 2,664 3,776
10th Percentile £370 £350 £353
25th Percentile £431 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £631 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £533
% change year-on-year - -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 155 32 49
10th Percentile £25.38 £25.15 £17.80
25th Percentile £49.03 £28.60 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +27.92% -36.57%
75th Percentile £79.50 £77.27 £61.60
90th Percentile £101.84 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year -0.86% +50.65% -36.49%

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 15,232 9,598 12,118
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.02% 37.69% 32.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,279 6,485 8,644
10th Percentile £325 £311 £306
25th Percentile £415 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.77% -3.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 544 247 333
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.00 £14.03
25th Percentile £23.20 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £42.59 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.35% +14.32% -31.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £40.73 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.60 £69.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £28.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +33.93% +27.27% -37.14%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 3,525 £544 -1.01% 906
North of England +7 969 £510 +7.37% 496
South East +2 837 £513 +2.65% 619
Midlands +3 570 £500 +1.63% 268
North West +8 498 £500 +1.83% 277
South West +6 429 £528 +5.50% 244
West Midlands +1 426 £500 -4.76% 164
Yorkshire +4 390 £505 +6.37% 142
East of England +4 174 £550 - 179
East Midlands +5 134 £500 +9.59% 104
North East +5 94 £525 +5.00% 84
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
1 327 (4.89%) SharePoint
2 201 (3.01%) Confluence
3 169 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 166 (2.48%) Apache Spark
5 113 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
6 104 (1.56%) Apache
7 36 (0.54%) SAS
8 25 (0.37%) IIS
9 18 (0.27%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
13 8 (0.12%) Appian
13 8 (0.12%) Mendix
13 8 (0.12%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) HCL Notes
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.090%) ArcGIS
16 5 (0.075%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 97 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 35 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 26 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.21%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.12%) Revit
10 7 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.075%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.060%) Notion
12 4 (0.060%) Trello
13 2 (0.030%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.015%) InDesign
14 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.015%) Sketch
14 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 95 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.21%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Maximo
5 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
7 7 (0.10%) Shopify
7 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.090%) Endur
8 6 (0.090%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.090%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.090%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.075%) Magento
9 5 (0.075%) SAP MM
9 5 (0.075%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.060%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.060%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,358 (35.26%) AWS
2 1,354 (20.25%) Azure DevOps
3 1,124 (16.81%) GCP
4 860 (12.86%) Entra ID
5 846 (12.65%) Power Platform
6 670 (10.02%) Microsoft 365
7 591 (8.84%) GitHub
8 425 (6.35%) Azure Data Factory
9 353 (5.28%) GitHub Actions
10 320 (4.78%) Serverless
11 279 (4.17%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 277 (4.14%) SaaS
13 247 (3.69%) Azure AKS
14 220 (3.29%) Power Automate
15 218 (3.26%) Azure Monitor
16 213 (3.18%) Dynamics 365
17 210 (3.14%) PaaS
18 199 (2.98%) Snowflake
19 188 (2.81%) PowerApps
20 182 (2.72%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 413 (6.18%) Firewall
2 309 (4.62%) DNS
3 245 (3.66%) VPN
4 226 (3.38%) Network Security
5 190 (2.84%) WAN
6 164 (2.45%) DHCP
7 116 (1.73%) LAN
8 104 (1.56%) TCP/IP
9 100 (1.50%) SD-WAN
10 94 (1.41%) BGP
11 74 (1.11%) OSPF
12 70 (1.05%) VLAN
12 70 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
13 59 (0.88%) Kerberos
14 51 (0.76%) SAN
15 49 (0.73%) SSL
16 42 (0.63%) VXLAN
17 41 (0.61%) Wireless
18 37 (0.55%) Internet
19 36 (0.54%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 588 (8.79%) Power BI
2 401 (6.00%) SQL Server
3 336 (5.02%) Data Warehouse
4 307 (4.59%) Data Lake
5 237 (3.54%) PostgreSQL
6 180 (2.69%) Azure SQL Database
7 174 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 159 (2.38%) Metadata
9 131 (1.96%) Delta Lake
10 115 (1.72%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.35%) Big Data
12 79 (1.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.11%) MongoDB
13 74 (1.11%) Tableau
14 65 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (0.82%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.81%) Oracle Database
17 46 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
17 46 (0.69%) MySQL
18 44 (0.66%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 481 (7.19%) JIRA
2 479 (7.16%) Git
3 309 (4.62%) Jenkins
4 247 (3.69%) GitLab
5 101 (1.51%) Selenium
6 58 (0.87%) Postman
7 57 (0.85%) JMeter
8 53 (0.79%) JUnit
9 51 (0.76%) Cucumber
10 43 (0.64%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 38 (0.57%) MLflow
13 37 (0.55%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.52%) WebDriver
15 30 (0.45%) Cypress.io
16 29 (0.43%) Maven
17 26 (0.39%) Gatling
18 25 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
19 24 (0.36%) LoadRunner
20 23 (0.34%) Gradle
General
1 1,678 (25.09%) Social Skills
2 1,333 (19.93%) Finance
3 678 (10.14%) Public Sector
4 624 (9.33%) Analytical Skills
5 390 (5.83%) Banking
6 189 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 154 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 153 (2.29%) Legal
9 149 (2.23%) Retail
10 87 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
11 72 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
12 69 (1.03%) Investment Banking
13 67 (1.00%) Front Office
14 64 (0.96%) Financial Institution
14 64 (0.96%) Law
15 56 (0.84%) Telecoms
16 54 (0.81%) Marketing
17 53 (0.79%) Manufacturing
17 53 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
18 42 (0.63%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,186 (17.73%) Architect
2 833 (12.46%) Senior
3 806 (12.05%) Developer
4 586 (8.76%) Azure Engineer
5 525 (7.85%) Data Engineer
6 511 (7.64%) Lead
7 408 (6.10%) Analyst
8 347 (5.19%) Solutions Architect
9 321 (4.80%) DevOps Engineer
10 279 (4.17%) Consultant
11 264 (3.95%) Cloud Engineer
12 235 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 189 (2.83%) Data Architect
14 181 (2.71%) Azure Architect
15 172 (2.57%) Platform Engineer
15 172 (2.57%) Security Engineer
16 159 (2.38%) Technical Architect
17 154 (2.30%) Business Analyst
18 146 (2.18%) Project Manager
19 144 (2.15%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 520 (7.78%) .NET
2 444 (6.64%) REST
3 269 (4.02%) React
4 250 (3.74%) Kafka
5 224 (3.35%) PySpark
6 209 (3.13%) RESTful
7 205 (3.07%) OAuth
8 172 (2.57%) Spring
9 169 (2.53%) Node.js
10 160 (2.39%) AngularJS
11 142 (2.12%) Spring Boot
12 140 (2.09%) LDAP
13 139 (2.08%) JSON
14 138 (2.06%) SAML
15 126 (1.88%) OpenID
16 115 (1.72%) HTML
17 113 (1.69%) Middleware
18 112 (1.67%) .NET Framework
19 109 (1.63%) SOAP
20 102 (1.53%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 724 (10.83%) Cloud Native
2 288 (4.31%) Onboarding
3 258 (3.86%) Product Ownership
4 213 (3.18%) Data Centre
5 206 (3.08%) Distributed Systems
6 205 (3.07%) Hybrid Cloud
7 184 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
8 150 (2.24%) Security Posture
9 147 (2.20%) AI Agents
10 137 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
11 134 (2.00%) Public Cloud
12 102 (1.53%) Data Structures
13 90 (1.35%) Management Information System
14 87 (1.30%) Replication
15 84 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
16 73 (1.09%) PKI
17 72 (1.08%) Enterprise Cloud
18 69 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
19 62 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
20 54 (0.81%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 782 (11.69%) Windows
2 339 (5.07%) Linux
3 245 (3.66%) Windows Server
4 98 (1.47%) Windows 10
5 71 (1.06%) Unix
6 61 (0.91%) Apple iOS
6 61 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 60 (0.90%) Mac OS
8 55 (0.82%) Android
9 47 (0.70%) VMS
10 35 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 24 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 6 (0.090%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.090%) Rocky
17 6 (0.090%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,446 (36.57%) DevOps
2 2,063 (30.85%) CI/CD
3 1,612 (24.10%) Agile
4 1,055 (15.77%) AI
5 995 (14.88%) Infrastructure as Code
6 982 (14.68%) Analytics
7 964 (14.41%) Migration
8 922 (13.79%) Problem-Solving
9 786 (11.75%) Stakeholder Management
10 750 (11.21%) Data Modelling
11 663 (9.91%) Continuous Improvement
12 660 (9.87%) Data Pipeline
13 654 (9.78%) Roadmaps
14 632 (9.45%) Business Intelligence
15 608 (9.09%) Containerisation
16 602 (9.00%) ETL
17 571 (8.54%) Microservices
18 569 (8.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 565 (8.45%) Data Engineering
20 510 (7.63%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,590 (23.77%) Python
2 1,385 (20.71%) SQL
3 680 (10.17%) PowerShell
4 554 (8.28%) Java
5 535 (8.00%) C#
6 369 (5.52%) JavaScript
7 247 (3.69%) TypeScript
8 235 (3.51%) Bash
9 223 (3.33%) Bicep
10 86 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 78 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.08%) Go
13 70 (1.05%) Scala
14 41 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.54%) R
16 33 (0.49%) Shell Script
17 29 (0.43%) Kotlin
18 28 (0.42%) PL/SQL
19 21 (0.31%) C++
20 20 (0.30%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,644 (24.58%) Security Cleared
2 1,364 (20.39%) SC Cleared
3 489 (7.31%) Degree
4 355 (5.31%) Azure Certification
5 217 (3.24%) CISSP
6 182 (2.72%) DV Cleared
7 176 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
8 167 (2.50%) Cisco Certification
9 166 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
10 156 (2.33%) AWS Certification
11 126 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
12 107 (1.60%) CISM
13 79 (1.18%) CCNP
14 69 (1.03%) PMP
15 64 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 63 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 49 (0.73%) Master's Degree
18 48 (0.72%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
20 42 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 471 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 345 (5.16%) QA
3 302 (4.52%) GDPR
4 250 (3.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 236 (3.53%) NIST
6 132 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 95 (1.42%) NCSC
8 83 (1.24%) SLA
9 72 (1.08%) PCI DSS
10 68 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 64 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 55 (0.82%) GRC
13 54 (0.81%) WCAG
14 35 (0.52%) HIPAA
14 35 (0.52%) PMO
15 29 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 23 (0.34%) NIST 800
16 23 (0.34%) SOC 2
17 16 (0.24%) COBIT
18 15 (0.22%) Solvency II
System Software
1 837 (12.51%) Active Directory
2 692 (10.35%) Docker
3 187 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 126 (1.88%) Virtual Desktop
5 121 (1.81%) Virtual Machines
6 89 (1.33%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.88%) vSphere
8 50 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.40%) Firmware
11 21 (0.31%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.090%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.090%) IAG
17 5 (0.075%) KVM
17 5 (0.075%) RACF
17 5 (0.075%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,076 (16.09%) Terraform
2 948 (14.17%) Kubernetes
3 368 (5.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 307 (4.59%) Ansible
5 173 (2.59%) Grafana
6 151 (2.26%) Prometheus
7 147 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
8 92 (1.38%) SCCM
9 69 (1.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.60%) Progress Chef
11 39 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
12 37 (0.55%) Puppet
13 35 (0.52%) FortiGate
14 31 (0.46%) Argo
15 28 (0.42%) Istio
16 21 (0.31%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.28%) HAProxy
18 17 (0.25%) HP ALM
19 16 (0.24%) Packer
20 12 (0.18%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,161 (32.31%) Microsoft
2 637 (9.52%) Databricks
3 317 (4.74%) ServiceNow
4 260 (3.89%) VMware
5 252 (3.77%) Oracle
6 243 (3.63%) Google
7 190 (2.84%) SAP
8 183 (2.74%) Cisco
9 172 (2.57%) OpenAI
10 132 (1.97%) Splunk
11 125 (1.87%) CyberArk
11 125 (1.87%) Palo Alto
12 124 (1.85%) Salesforce
13 111 (1.66%) Foundry
14 88 (1.32%) Okta
15 87 (1.30%) Dynatrace
16 74 (1.11%) Zscaler
17 68 (1.02%) Informatica
18 60 (0.90%) Citrix
19 57 (0.85%) Fortinet