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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,773 3,902 5,165
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.44% 15.11% 13.84%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.13% 40.13% 42.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,766 2,701 3,789
10th Percentile £367 £350 £356
25th Percentile £433 £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 - -1.45% -3.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 34 49
10th Percentile £24.60 £25.30 £17.80
25th Percentile £38.25 £27.80 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +27.92% -37.75%
75th Percentile £78.88 £76.96 £61.60
90th Percentile £101.18 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £62.50 £38.50
% change year-on-year -8.00% +62.34% -36.57%

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 15,349 9,723 12,125
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.98% 37.65% 32.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,340 6,564 8,661
10th Percentile £325 £311 £308
25th Percentile £415 £413 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +2.08% -3.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 554 251 332
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.00 £14.01
25th Percentile £23.17 £17.57 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.53 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +61.15% +14.32% -31.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £40.73 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.18 £67.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £27.76 £22.00
% change year-on-year +35.09% +26.18% -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 2 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 2 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 2 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 3,545 £540 -1.82% 1,406
North of England +7 996 £508 +5.73% 650
South East +2 847 £515 +3.00% 726
Midlands +3 593 £500 +1.01% 356
North West +8 520 £500 +0.81% 361
West Midlands +1 440 £500 -4.76% 201
South West +7 433 £538 +6.97% 298
Yorkshire +5 396 £510 +7.37% 197
East of England +5 179 £550 - 211
East Midlands +3 142 £500 +8.11% 155
North East +3 93 £525 +5.00% 101
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
1 337 (4.98%) SharePoint
2 206 (3.04%) Confluence
3 171 (2.52%) Microsoft Exchange
4 165 (2.44%) Apache Spark
5 113 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
6 105 (1.55%) Apache
7 36 (0.53%) SAS
8 25 (0.37%) IIS
9 19 (0.28%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
13 8 (0.12%) Appian
13 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
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 5 (0.074%) Jupyter
Applications
1 100 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 66 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
3 63 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 26 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.21%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.12%) Revit
10 7 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.074%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.074%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.059%) Notion
12 4 (0.059%) Trello
13 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.015%) Houdini
14 1 (0.015%) InDesign
14 1 (0.015%) Sketch
14 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 94 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.35%) 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%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.089%) Endur
8 6 (0.089%) Magento
8 6 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.089%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.089%) Shopify
8 6 (0.089%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.074%) SAP MM
9 5 (0.074%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.059%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.059%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.059%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,383 (35.18%) AWS
2 1,374 (20.29%) Azure DevOps
3 1,126 (16.62%) GCP
4 878 (12.96%) Entra ID
5 857 (12.65%) Power Platform
6 684 (10.10%) Microsoft 365
7 595 (8.78%) GitHub
8 421 (6.22%) Azure Data Factory
9 358 (5.29%) GitHub Actions
10 320 (4.72%) Serverless
11 279 (4.12%) SaaS
12 277 (4.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 249 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 227 (3.35%) Azure Monitor
15 225 (3.32%) Power Automate
16 216 (3.19%) Dynamics 365
17 215 (3.17%) PaaS
18 202 (2.98%) Snowflake
19 196 (2.89%) PowerApps
20 184 (2.72%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 420 (6.20%) Firewall
2 316 (4.67%) DNS
3 253 (3.74%) VPN
4 231 (3.41%) Network Security
5 190 (2.81%) WAN
6 167 (2.47%) DHCP
7 119 (1.76%) LAN
8 109 (1.61%) TCP/IP
9 99 (1.46%) SD-WAN
10 98 (1.45%) BGP
11 78 (1.15%) OSPF
12 71 (1.05%) VLAN
13 70 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.84%) Kerberos
15 55 (0.81%) SSL
16 52 (0.77%) SAN
17 45 (0.66%) Wireless
18 42 (0.62%) VXLAN
19 40 (0.59%) IPsec
20 37 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 592 (8.74%) Power BI
2 410 (6.05%) SQL Server
3 335 (4.95%) Data Warehouse
4 299 (4.41%) Data Lake
5 239 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
6 177 (2.61%) Azure SQL Database
7 175 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 157 (2.32%) Metadata
9 132 (1.95%) Delta Lake
10 114 (1.68%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.34%) Big Data
12 79 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.11%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.09%) Tableau
15 64 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.84%) BigQuery
17 56 (0.83%) Oracle Database
18 51 (0.75%) MySQL
19 46 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
20 44 (0.65%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 489 (7.22%) Git
1 489 (7.22%) JIRA
2 316 (4.67%) Jenkins
3 246 (3.63%) GitLab
4 102 (1.51%) Selenium
5 58 (0.86%) Postman
6 57 (0.84%) JMeter
7 54 (0.80%) JUnit
8 51 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 43 (0.63%) REST Assured
10 41 (0.61%) SonarQube
11 39 (0.58%) MLflow
12 37 (0.55%) Visual Studio
13 35 (0.52%) WebDriver
14 31 (0.46%) Cypress.io
15 29 (0.43%) Maven
16 25 (0.37%) Gatling
16 25 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
17 24 (0.35%) LoadRunner
18 22 (0.32%) Gradle
General
1 1,702 (25.13%) Social Skills
2 1,340 (19.78%) Finance
3 695 (10.26%) Public Sector
4 643 (9.49%) Analytical Skills
5 390 (5.76%) Banking
6 193 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
7 156 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 156 (2.30%) Legal
7 156 (2.30%) Retail
8 91 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
9 72 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
10 68 (1.00%) Investment Banking
11 67 (0.99%) Front Office
12 64 (0.94%) Financial Institution
13 63 (0.93%) Law
14 58 (0.86%) Marketing
14 58 (0.86%) Telecoms
15 57 (0.84%) Manufacturing
16 54 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
17 44 (0.65%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,208 (17.84%) Architect
2 838 (12.37%) Senior
3 813 (12.00%) Developer
4 591 (8.73%) Azure Engineer
5 530 (7.83%) Data Engineer
6 522 (7.71%) Lead
7 412 (6.08%) Analyst
8 354 (5.23%) Solutions Architect
9 322 (4.75%) DevOps Engineer
10 283 (4.18%) Consultant
11 274 (4.05%) Cloud Engineer
12 238 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 193 (2.85%) Data Architect
14 184 (2.72%) Azure Architect
15 174 (2.57%) Platform Engineer
16 170 (2.51%) Security Engineer
17 161 (2.38%) Technical Architect
18 158 (2.33%) Business Analyst
19 147 (2.17%) Senior Developer
20 146 (2.16%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 522 (7.71%) .NET
2 452 (6.67%) REST
3 265 (3.91%) React
4 255 (3.76%) Kafka
5 225 (3.32%) PySpark
6 212 (3.13%) RESTful
7 204 (3.01%) OAuth
8 172 (2.54%) Spring
9 170 (2.51%) Node.js
10 157 (2.32%) AngularJS
11 142 (2.10%) Spring Boot
12 139 (2.05%) JSON
13 138 (2.04%) SAML
14 136 (2.01%) LDAP
15 124 (1.83%) OpenID
16 115 (1.70%) HTML
17 113 (1.67%) .NET Framework
18 110 (1.62%) Middleware
19 109 (1.61%) SOAP
20 103 (1.52%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 727 (10.73%) Cloud Native
2 293 (4.33%) Onboarding
3 262 (3.87%) Product Ownership
4 216 (3.19%) Data Centre
5 208 (3.07%) Hybrid Cloud
6 207 (3.06%) Distributed Systems
7 186 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
8 153 (2.26%) AI Agents
9 152 (2.24%) Security Posture
10 139 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
11 132 (1.95%) Public Cloud
12 101 (1.49%) Data Structures
13 92 (1.36%) Management Information System
14 91 (1.34%) Replication
15 86 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
16 75 (1.11%) PKI
17 74 (1.09%) Enterprise Cloud
18 70 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
19 63 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
20 54 (0.80%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 808 (11.93%) Windows
2 344 (5.08%) Linux
3 257 (3.79%) Windows Server
4 100 (1.48%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.09%) Unix
6 62 (0.92%) Mac OS
6 62 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 60 (0.89%) Apple iOS
8 56 (0.83%) Android
9 45 (0.66%) VMS
10 36 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 6 (0.089%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.089%) Rocky
17 6 (0.089%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,472 (36.50%) DevOps
2 2,074 (30.62%) CI/CD
3 1,629 (24.05%) Agile
4 1,067 (15.75%) AI
5 1,011 (14.93%) Infrastructure as Code
6 987 (14.57%) Analytics
7 979 (14.45%) Migration
8 929 (13.72%) Problem-Solving
9 822 (12.14%) Stakeholder Management
10 755 (11.15%) Data Modelling
11 683 (10.08%) Continuous Improvement
12 670 (9.89%) Data Pipeline
13 661 (9.76%) Roadmaps
14 636 (9.39%) Business Intelligence
15 615 (9.08%) Containerisation
16 600 (8.86%) ETL
17 582 (8.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 581 (8.58%) Microservices
19 572 (8.45%) Data Engineering
20 517 (7.63%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,603 (23.67%) Python
2 1,395 (20.60%) SQL
3 687 (10.14%) PowerShell
4 559 (8.25%) Java
5 535 (7.90%) C#
6 370 (5.46%) JavaScript
7 249 (3.68%) TypeScript
8 240 (3.54%) Bash
9 235 (3.47%) Bicep
10 87 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.21%) T-SQL
12 73 (1.08%) Go
13 69 (1.02%) Scala
14 43 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
15 35 (0.52%) R
16 33 (0.49%) Shell Script
17 29 (0.43%) Kotlin
17 29 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) C++
18 21 (0.31%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,662 (24.54%) Security Cleared
2 1,369 (20.21%) SC Cleared
3 504 (7.44%) Degree
4 363 (5.36%) Azure Certification
5 220 (3.25%) CISSP
6 189 (2.79%) DV Cleared
7 177 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
8 173 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
8 173 (2.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 158 (2.33%) AWS Certification
10 134 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
11 107 (1.58%) CISM
12 82 (1.21%) CCNP
13 69 (1.02%) PMP
14 64 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 64 (0.94%) PMI Certification
15 52 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 48 (0.71%) ISTQB
17 46 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
18 43 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 471 (6.95%) Data Quality
2 349 (5.15%) QA
3 305 (4.50%) GDPR
4 251 (3.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 240 (3.54%) NIST
6 136 (2.01%) Accessibility
7 94 (1.39%) NCSC
8 86 (1.27%) SLA
9 74 (1.09%) PCI DSS
10 69 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 55 (0.81%) GRC
12 55 (0.81%) WCAG
13 39 (0.58%) PMO
14 35 (0.52%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 24 (0.35%) NIST 800
16 24 (0.35%) SOC 2
17 17 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 16 (0.24%) COBIT
System Software
1 852 (12.58%) Active Directory
2 697 (10.29%) Docker
3 190 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 128 (1.89%) Virtual Desktop
4 128 (1.89%) Virtual Machines
5 89 (1.31%) Hyper-V
6 60 (0.89%) vSphere
7 50 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
8 30 (0.44%) VMware NSX
9 28 (0.41%) Firmware
10 22 (0.32%) NFS
11 17 (0.25%) Postfix
12 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) Varnish
14 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.089%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.074%) KVM
16 5 (0.074%) RACF
16 5 (0.074%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,094 (16.15%) Terraform
2 957 (14.13%) Kubernetes
3 377 (5.57%) Microsoft Intune
4 315 (4.65%) Ansible
5 178 (2.63%) Grafana
6 153 (2.26%) Prometheus
7 148 (2.19%) Single Sign-On
8 93 (1.37%) SCCM
9 69 (1.02%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 41 (0.61%) Jamf Pro
11 40 (0.59%) Progress Chef
12 37 (0.55%) Puppet
13 33 (0.49%) FortiGate
14 32 (0.47%) Argo
15 28 (0.41%) Istio
16 21 (0.31%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.28%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.24%) HP ALM
18 16 (0.24%) Packer
19 13 (0.19%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,207 (32.59%) Microsoft
2 633 (9.35%) Databricks
3 330 (4.87%) ServiceNow
4 262 (3.87%) VMware
5 259 (3.82%) Oracle
6 245 (3.62%) Google
7 195 (2.88%) SAP
8 186 (2.75%) Cisco
9 168 (2.48%) OpenAI
10 132 (1.95%) Splunk
11 128 (1.89%) Salesforce
12 127 (1.88%) Palo Alto
13 124 (1.83%) CyberArk
14 117 (1.73%) Foundry
15 90 (1.33%) Okta
16 87 (1.28%) Dynatrace
17 74 (1.09%) Zscaler
18 67 (0.99%) Informatica
19 63 (0.93%) Citrix
20 59 (0.87%) Fortinet