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 24 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,130 3,808 4,943
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.43% 15.48% 13.28%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.04% 41.37% 41.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,426 2,710 3,626
10th Percentile £363 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -2.78% -4.00%
75th Percentile £622 £641 £644
90th Percentile £723 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 26 51
10th Percentile £25.47 £21.78 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.55
Median hourly rate £57.50 £57.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.88% +62.86% -35.39%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.06 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £90.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% - -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 14,244 9,205 11,868
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.85% 37.42% 31.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,823 6,454 8,547
10th Percentile £315 £313 £285
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £612 £638 £638
90th Percentile £714 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £521 £525
% change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 436 194 323
10th Percentile £16.13 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.02 £18.13 £15.95
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.45 £20.97
Median % change year-on-year +70.13% +26.13% -28.92%
75th Percentile £67.50 £42.74 £33.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.75 £61.20
UK median hourly rate £42.59 £27.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +54.88% +30.95% -37.78%

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 24 April 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 24 April 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 24 April 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 3,296 £530 -3.64% 807
North of England +3 833 £500 +5.26% 483
South East +2 795 £500 -4.76% 575
Midlands 0 490 £488 -2.50% 258
North West +2 448 £500 - 256
South West +6 377 £500 -4.76% 210
West Midlands +1 353 £500 -4.76% 156
Yorkshire +3 339 £500 +17.65% 144
East of England +5 153 £540 -8.47% 175
East Midlands +2 127 £450 -4.26% 101
North East -1 53 £525 +3.70% 85
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
1 281 (4.58%) SharePoint
2 177 (2.89%) Microsoft Exchange
3 170 (2.77%) Apache Spark
4 160 (2.61%) Confluence
5 95 (1.55%) Apache
6 89 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) SAS
8 19 (0.31%) IIS
9 14 (0.23%) Appian
9 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
9 14 (0.23%) CMS
10 13 (0.21%) Camunda
10 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.21%) Mendix
11 12 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.098%) WebLogic
15 5 (0.082%) BizTalk Server
15 5 (0.082%) nginx
Applications
1 99 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.67%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.082%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.082%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.065%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.065%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.065%) Weka
11 3 (0.049%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) Revit
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 100 (1.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.18%) Maximo
3 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
7 5 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.065%) Cloudability
8 4 (0.065%) Oracle FAH
8 4 (0.065%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.065%) SAP ERP
8 4 (0.065%) Unit4 Business World
9 3 (0.049%) Elite 3E
9 3 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 3 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,115 (34.50%) AWS
2 1,280 (20.88%) Azure DevOps
3 1,166 (19.02%) GCP
4 798 (13.02%) Power Platform
5 773 (12.61%) Entra ID
6 647 (10.55%) Microsoft 365
7 583 (9.51%) GitHub
8 462 (7.54%) Azure Data Factory
9 333 (5.43%) Serverless
10 332 (5.42%) GitHub Actions
11 302 (4.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 247 (4.03%) SaaS
13 240 (3.92%) Azure AKS
14 235 (3.83%) Dynamics 365
15 224 (3.65%) Azure Monitor
16 212 (3.46%) Power Automate
17 208 (3.39%) PaaS
18 189 (3.08%) Azure Functions
19 188 (3.07%) Azure Logic Apps
20 174 (2.84%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 382 (6.23%) Firewall
2 262 (4.27%) DNS
3 232 (3.78%) VPN
4 207 (3.38%) Network Security
5 151 (2.46%) WAN
6 145 (2.37%) DHCP
7 116 (1.89%) LAN
8 89 (1.45%) TCP/IP
9 71 (1.16%) Wi-Fi
10 70 (1.14%) VLAN
11 68 (1.11%) SD-WAN
12 67 (1.09%) Kerberos
13 46 (0.75%) BGP
14 40 (0.65%) OSPF
15 38 (0.62%) SAN
16 37 (0.60%) SSL
17 35 (0.57%) HTTP
17 35 (0.57%) Wireless
18 31 (0.51%) Internet
19 27 (0.44%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 555 (9.05%) Power BI
2 374 (6.10%) SQL Server
3 338 (5.51%) Data Warehouse
4 301 (4.91%) Data Lake
5 213 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 205 (3.34%) Azure SQL Database
7 178 (2.90%) NoSQL
8 146 (2.38%) Metadata
9 137 (2.23%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.57%) Relational Database
11 94 (1.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 88 (1.44%) Big Data
13 79 (1.29%) MongoDB
14 77 (1.26%) Tableau
15 65 (1.06%) Oracle Database
16 59 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.90%) BigQuery
18 48 (0.78%) Star Schema
19 47 (0.77%) MySQL
20 44 (0.72%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 449 (7.32%) Git
2 421 (6.87%) JIRA
3 300 (4.89%) Jenkins
4 221 (3.61%) GitLab
5 100 (1.63%) Selenium
6 66 (1.08%) Postman
7 57 (0.93%) JUnit
8 55 (0.90%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.82%) MLflow
10 46 (0.75%) JMeter
11 41 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 34 (0.55%) Artifactory
12 34 (0.55%) SonarQube
13 33 (0.54%) Cypress.io
14 30 (0.49%) Oracle APEX
15 28 (0.46%) TestRail
16 26 (0.42%) Visual Studio
17 24 (0.39%) Bitbucket
17 24 (0.39%) Gatling
18 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
General
1 1,657 (27.03%) Social Skills
2 1,141 (18.61%) Finance
3 639 (10.42%) Public Sector
4 606 (9.89%) Analytical Skills
5 354 (5.77%) Banking
6 198 (3.23%) Documentation Skills
7 140 (2.28%) Legal
8 96 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 90 (1.47%) Retail
10 82 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
11 72 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
12 67 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
13 65 (1.06%) Financial Institution
14 63 (1.03%) Law
15 62 (1.01%) Marketing
16 60 (0.98%) Front Office
16 60 (0.98%) Investment Banking
17 54 (0.88%) Telecoms
18 44 (0.72%) Local Government
19 33 (0.54%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,009 (16.46%) Architect
2 790 (12.89%) Developer
3 735 (11.99%) Senior
4 575 (9.38%) Azure Engineer
5 532 (8.68%) Data Engineer
6 463 (7.55%) Lead
7 374 (6.10%) Analyst
8 320 (5.22%) DevOps Engineer
9 262 (4.27%) Solutions Architect
10 248 (4.05%) Consultant
11 196 (3.20%) Cloud Engineer
12 183 (2.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 158 (2.58%) Azure Architect
14 152 (2.48%) Platform Engineer
15 151 (2.46%) Security Engineer
16 138 (2.25%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 135 (2.20%) Data Architect
18 133 (2.17%) Technical Architect
19 131 (2.14%) Senior Developer
20 130 (2.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (7.65%) .NET
2 395 (6.44%) REST
3 261 (4.26%) React
4 245 (4.00%) Kafka
5 223 (3.64%) PySpark
6 208 (3.39%) Node.js
7 182 (2.97%) OAuth
8 181 (2.95%) RESTful
9 180 (2.94%) Spring
10 160 (2.61%) LDAP
11 158 (2.58%) AngularJS
12 144 (2.35%) Spring Boot
13 126 (2.06%) JSON
14 124 (2.02%) SAML
15 121 (1.97%) HTML
16 120 (1.96%) SOAP
17 117 (1.91%) Middleware
18 111 (1.81%) OpenID
19 100 (1.63%) CSS
19 100 (1.63%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 584 (9.53%) Cloud Native
2 244 (3.98%) Onboarding
3 210 (3.43%) Product Ownership
4 174 (2.84%) Hybrid Cloud
5 158 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
6 155 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
7 150 (2.45%) Security Posture
8 147 (2.40%) Distributed Systems
9 137 (2.23%) Public Cloud
10 133 (2.17%) Data Centre
11 110 (1.79%) AI Agents
12 84 (1.37%) Data Structures
12 84 (1.37%) Replication
13 69 (1.13%) Management Information System
14 65 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
15 59 (0.96%) PKI
16 55 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
17 53 (0.86%) Low-Code
18 49 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
19 45 (0.73%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 682 (11.13%) Windows
2 308 (5.02%) Linux
3 214 (3.49%) Windows Server
4 113 (1.84%) Windows 10
5 62 (1.01%) VMS
6 58 (0.95%) Unix
7 53 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 48 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 40 (0.65%) Apple iOS
10 33 (0.54%) Android
11 20 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.13%) CentOS
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.11%) AIX
17 6 (0.098%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.082%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,310 (37.68%) DevOps
2 1,884 (30.73%) CI/CD
3 1,423 (23.21%) Agile
4 949 (15.48%) Problem-Solving
5 944 (15.40%) Analytics
6 875 (14.27%) AI
7 860 (14.03%) Infrastructure as Code
8 832 (13.57%) Migration
9 708 (11.55%) Data Modelling
10 618 (10.08%) Business Intelligence
11 609 (9.93%) Data Pipeline
11 609 (9.93%) Stakeholder Management
12 592 (9.66%) Continuous Improvement
13 578 (9.43%) Containerisation
14 577 (9.41%) ETL
15 543 (8.86%) Microservices
16 539 (8.79%) Data Engineering
17 506 (8.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 498 (8.12%) Roadmaps
19 474 (7.73%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,539 (25.11%) Python
2 1,378 (22.48%) SQL
3 673 (10.98%) PowerShell
4 528 (8.61%) C#
5 526 (8.58%) Java
6 395 (6.44%) JavaScript
7 227 (3.70%) TypeScript
8 222 (3.62%) Bash
9 199 (3.25%) Bicep
10 95 (1.55%) Scala
11 78 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 77 (1.26%) Go
13 73 (1.19%) T-SQL
14 68 (1.11%) PL/SQL
15 61 (1.00%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.69%) R
17 36 (0.59%) Shell Script
18 21 (0.34%) C++
19 19 (0.31%) PHP
20 18 (0.29%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,554 (25.35%) Security Cleared
2 1,301 (21.22%) SC Cleared
3 448 (7.31%) Degree
4 354 (5.77%) Azure Certification
5 189 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
6 163 (2.66%) CISSP
7 146 (2.38%) Microsoft Certification
8 129 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
9 125 (2.04%) DV Cleared
10 119 (1.94%) AWS Certification
11 101 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
12 95 (1.55%) CISM
13 69 (1.13%) CCNP
14 59 (0.96%) PMP
15 57 (0.93%) Master's Degree
16 55 (0.90%) PMI Certification
16 55 (0.90%) TOGAF Certification
17 49 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 39 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (7.32%) Data Quality
2 347 (5.66%) GDPR
3 330 (5.38%) QA
4 249 (4.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 224 (3.65%) NIST
6 88 (1.44%) Accessibility
7 79 (1.29%) NCSC
8 78 (1.27%) PCI DSS
9 59 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 55 (0.90%) SLA
11 51 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
12 48 (0.78%) PMO
13 38 (0.62%) GRC
14 32 (0.52%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.49%) WCAG
16 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
17 22 (0.36%) NIST 800
18 19 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 18 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
20 16 (0.26%) PSD2
System Software
1 806 (13.15%) Active Directory
2 697 (11.37%) Docker
3 174 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 106 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
5 96 (1.57%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 58 (0.95%) vSphere
8 35 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 23 (0.38%) Firmware
10 22 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.28%) NFS
12 11 (0.18%) Postfix
13 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.098%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.098%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.098%) RACF
14 6 (0.098%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.098%) Varnish
15 5 (0.082%) HDFS
15 5 (0.082%) Snort
Systems Management
1 975 (15.91%) Terraform
2 914 (14.91%) Kubernetes
3 332 (5.42%) Microsoft Intune
4 268 (4.37%) Ansible
5 168 (2.74%) Grafana
6 140 (2.28%) Prometheus
6 140 (2.28%) Single Sign-On
7 104 (1.70%) SCCM
8 68 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 36 (0.59%) Istio
10 35 (0.57%) Argo
11 32 (0.52%) Puppet
12 27 (0.44%) Progress Chef
13 23 (0.38%) vCenter Server
14 22 (0.36%) FortiGate
14 22 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
15 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
16 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
17 15 (0.24%) linkerd
18 14 (0.23%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,020 (32.95%) Microsoft
2 624 (10.18%) Databricks
3 292 (4.76%) Oracle
4 278 (4.54%) Google
5 267 (4.36%) ServiceNow
6 247 (4.03%) VMware
7 176 (2.87%) SAP
8 161 (2.63%) OpenAI
9 157 (2.56%) Cisco
10 135 (2.20%) Splunk
11 130 (2.12%) CyberArk
12 105 (1.71%) Foundry
13 85 (1.39%) Salesforce
14 82 (1.34%) Okta
15 78 (1.27%) Palo Alto
16 67 (1.09%) BeyondTrust
17 65 (1.06%) Citrix
18 60 (0.98%) IBM
19 59 (0.96%) Dynatrace
19 59 (0.96%) Informatica