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

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,989 4,078 5,048
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.55% 14.90% 14.44%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.45% 39.92% 43.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,897 2,833 3,704
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £525
% change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 32 38
10th Percentile £19.50 £26.00 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £27.24 £22.68
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +23.50% -41.67%
75th Percentile £79.75 £76.56 £59.00
90th Percentile £100.76 £100.00 £71.28
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £35.00
% change year-on-year +16.75% +40.71% -41.57%

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 15,724 10,215 11,651
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.98% 37.33% 33.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,491 6,914 8,297
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £419 £408 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.05% -2.38% -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 559 267 278
10th Percentile £16.70 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +55.07% +14.32% -36.96%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £46.18
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.02 £27.50 £22.00
% change year-on-year +34.62% +25.00% -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 24 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 24 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 24 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 3,645 £550 - 1,367
North of England +7 1,020 £500 +2.04% 643
South East +2 899 £525 +5.00% 697
Midlands +3 629 £495 +0.61% 303
North West +7 536 £503 +0.50% 345
West Midlands +3 472 £495 -5.71% 195
South West +6 443 £530 +6.00% 293
Yorkshire +4 409 £500 +5.26% 201
East of England +6 181 £550 -2.22% 184
East Midlands +8 146 £481 +4.05% 107
North East +2 90 £525 +5.00% 108
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
1 363 (5.19%) SharePoint
2 240 (3.43%) Confluence
3 178 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 162 (2.32%) Apache Spark
5 118 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.53%) Apache
7 38 (0.54%) SAS
8 25 (0.36%) IIS
9 15 (0.21%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 13 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.10%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) Umbraco
13 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.086%) Camunda
14 6 (0.086%) Documentum
14 6 (0.086%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.086%) Mendix
15 5 (0.072%) Appian
Applications
1 108 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 66 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (0.43%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.41%) Chatbot
6 27 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.13%) Trello
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
11 4 (0.057%) Notion
12 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.029%) Houdini
13 2 (0.029%) NUKE
13 2 (0.029%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.014%) InDesign
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 99 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 70 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.39%) 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 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.10%) Shopify
7 6 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.072%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.072%) SimCorp Dimension
8 5 (0.072%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.072%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.057%) Adobe Campaign
9 4 (0.057%) Endur
9 4 (0.057%) Remedy AR System
9 4 (0.057%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,477 (35.44%) AWS
2 1,444 (20.66%) Azure DevOps
3 1,177 (16.84%) GCP
4 914 (13.08%) Entra ID
5 877 (12.55%) Power Platform
6 699 (10.00%) Microsoft 365
7 644 (9.21%) GitHub
8 423 (6.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 389 (5.57%) GitHub Actions
10 305 (4.36%) Serverless
11 292 (4.18%) SaaS
12 286 (4.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 256 (3.66%) Azure AKS
14 249 (3.56%) Azure Monitor
15 234 (3.35%) Power Automate
16 225 (3.22%) PaaS
17 224 (3.21%) Dynamics 365
18 211 (3.02%) PowerApps
19 201 (2.88%) Snowflake
20 194 (2.78%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 467 (6.68%) Firewall
2 343 (4.91%) DNS
3 283 (4.05%) VPN
4 247 (3.53%) Network Security
5 183 (2.62%) WAN
6 180 (2.58%) DHCP
7 150 (2.15%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.69%) LAN
9 112 (1.60%) BGP
10 92 (1.32%) OSPF
11 90 (1.29%) SD-WAN
12 86 (1.23%) VLAN
13 74 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (0.84%) SSL
15 56 (0.80%) SAN
16 53 (0.76%) Wireless
17 47 (0.67%) IPsec
18 44 (0.63%) VXLAN
19 38 (0.54%) Internet
20 37 (0.53%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 624 (8.93%) Power BI
2 415 (5.94%) SQL Server
3 356 (5.09%) Data Warehouse
4 311 (4.45%) Data Lake
5 249 (3.56%) PostgreSQL
6 186 (2.66%) NoSQL
7 175 (2.50%) Metadata
8 173 (2.48%) Azure SQL Database
9 123 (1.76%) Delta Lake
10 115 (1.65%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.27%) Big Data
12 84 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 69 (0.99%) MongoDB
13 69 (0.99%) Tableau
14 59 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.82%) MySQL
16 55 (0.79%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.77%) Oracle Database
18 49 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
19 46 (0.66%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 528 (7.55%) JIRA
2 523 (7.48%) Git
3 334 (4.78%) Jenkins
4 248 (3.55%) GitLab
5 101 (1.45%) Selenium
6 60 (0.86%) JUnit
7 51 (0.73%) JMeter
8 48 (0.69%) Cucumber
8 48 (0.69%) Postman
9 44 (0.63%) SonarQube
10 41 (0.59%) Cypress.io
11 37 (0.53%) WebDriver
12 36 (0.52%) Maven
12 36 (0.52%) Visual Studio
13 35 (0.50%) MLflow
14 33 (0.47%) REST Assured
15 29 (0.41%) Gradle
16 26 (0.37%) Gatling
17 25 (0.36%) Bitbucket
18 24 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,757 (25.14%) Social Skills
2 1,381 (19.76%) Finance
3 764 (10.93%) Public Sector
4 690 (9.87%) Analytical Skills
5 397 (5.68%) Banking
6 203 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
7 172 (2.46%) Retail
8 167 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 151 (2.16%) Legal
10 91 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
11 82 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 77 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
13 70 (1.00%) Law
14 68 (0.97%) Manufacturing
15 65 (0.93%) Marketing
16 63 (0.90%) Front Office
16 63 (0.90%) Investment Banking
17 62 (0.89%) Financial Institution
18 52 (0.74%) Aerospace
18 52 (0.74%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,236 (17.68%) Architect
2 888 (12.71%) Senior
3 831 (11.89%) Developer
4 616 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 567 (8.11%) Lead
6 532 (7.61%) Data Engineer
7 433 (6.20%) Analyst
8 380 (5.44%) Solutions Architect
9 338 (4.84%) DevOps Engineer
10 297 (4.25%) Cloud Engineer
11 274 (3.92%) Consultant
12 263 (3.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 208 (2.98%) Data Architect
14 187 (2.68%) Platform Engineer
15 176 (2.52%) Security Engineer
16 174 (2.49%) Azure Architect
17 163 (2.33%) Business Analyst
18 161 (2.30%) Project Manager
18 161 (2.30%) Technical Architect
19 154 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 528 (7.55%) .NET
2 483 (6.91%) REST
3 274 (3.92%) Kafka
4 265 (3.79%) React
5 223 (3.19%) RESTful
6 219 (3.13%) PySpark
7 209 (2.99%) OAuth
8 165 (2.36%) Spring
9 163 (2.33%) JSON
10 161 (2.30%) Node.js
11 151 (2.16%) AngularJS
12 135 (1.93%) SAML
13 133 (1.90%) Spring Boot
14 129 (1.85%) OpenID
15 124 (1.77%) .NET Framework
15 124 (1.77%) HTML
16 117 (1.67%) OAuth2
17 114 (1.63%) LDAP
17 114 (1.63%) Middleware
18 113 (1.62%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 741 (10.60%) Cloud Native
2 328 (4.69%) Onboarding
3 286 (4.09%) Product Ownership
4 232 (3.32%) Distributed Systems
5 226 (3.23%) Data Centre
6 220 (3.15%) Hybrid Cloud
7 203 (2.90%) Legacy Systems
8 191 (2.73%) AI Agents
9 157 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
10 152 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 126 (1.80%) Data Structures
12 125 (1.79%) Public Cloud
13 109 (1.56%) Management Information System
14 94 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 87 (1.24%) Enterprise Cloud
16 85 (1.22%) PKI
17 82 (1.17%) Replication
18 76 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
19 70 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
20 62 (0.89%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 831 (11.89%) Windows
2 390 (5.58%) Linux
3 265 (3.79%) Windows Server
4 107 (1.53%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.07%) Unix
6 72 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 63 (0.90%) Android
7 63 (0.90%) Mac OS
8 58 (0.83%) Apple iOS
9 45 (0.64%) VMS
10 42 (0.60%) Ubuntu
11 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.16%) CentOS
15 9 (0.13%) Debian
16 6 (0.086%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.072%) AIX
17 5 (0.072%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,546 (36.43%) DevOps
2 2,142 (30.65%) CI/CD
3 1,742 (24.92%) Agile
4 1,114 (15.94%) AI
5 1,068 (15.28%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,021 (14.61%) Migration
7 1,014 (14.51%) Analytics
8 958 (13.71%) Stakeholder Management
9 926 (13.25%) Problem-Solving
10 795 (11.38%) Data Modelling
11 746 (10.67%) Continuous Improvement
12 683 (9.77%) Data Pipeline
13 679 (9.72%) Roadmaps
14 672 (9.62%) Business Intelligence
15 640 (9.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 624 (8.93%) Containerisation
17 610 (8.73%) Microservices
18 591 (8.46%) ETL
19 580 (8.30%) Data Engineering
20 543 (7.77%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,626 (23.27%) Python
2 1,402 (20.06%) SQL
3 730 (10.44%) PowerShell
4 568 (8.13%) Java
5 526 (7.53%) C#
6 385 (5.51%) JavaScript
7 300 (4.29%) Bash
8 263 (3.76%) Bicep
9 243 (3.48%) TypeScript
10 89 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.92%) Go
13 50 (0.72%) Scala
14 47 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 40 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 35 (0.50%) Kotlin
16 35 (0.50%) R
17 29 (0.41%) PL/SQL
18 26 (0.37%) Groovy
19 21 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,759 (25.17%) Security Cleared
2 1,423 (20.36%) SC Cleared
3 514 (7.35%) Degree
4 385 (5.51%) Azure Certification
5 234 (3.35%) DV Cleared
6 222 (3.18%) CISSP
7 191 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
8 183 (2.62%) Cisco Certification
9 171 (2.45%) AWS Certification
10 165 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
11 145 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
12 107 (1.53%) CISM
13 91 (1.30%) CCNP
14 71 (1.02%) PMP
15 68 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 52 (0.74%) Master's Degree
18 48 (0.69%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 44 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 492 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 361 (5.17%) QA
3 291 (4.16%) GDPR
4 247 (3.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 247 (3.53%) NIST
5 162 (2.32%) Accessibility
6 93 (1.33%) NCSC
7 92 (1.32%) SLA
8 69 (0.99%) PCI DSS
9 67 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
9 67 (0.96%) WCAG
10 66 (0.94%) GRC
11 52 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 49 (0.70%) PMO
13 30 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 29 (0.41%) HIPAA
15 23 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 22 (0.31%) NIST 800
17 16 (0.23%) COBIT
18 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 880 (12.59%) Active Directory
2 736 (10.53%) Docker
3 192 (2.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 135 (1.93%) Virtual Desktop
5 127 (1.82%) Virtual Machines
6 91 (1.30%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.87%) vSphere
8 51 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.49%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.40%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 16 (0.23%) Postfix
13 13 (0.19%) IAG
14 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.10%) Varnish
16 6 (0.086%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.086%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.072%) RACF
17 5 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.057%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,140 (16.31%) Terraform
2 995 (14.24%) Kubernetes
3 384 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 351 (5.02%) Ansible
5 210 (3.00%) Grafana
6 175 (2.50%) Prometheus
7 137 (1.96%) Single Sign-On
8 101 (1.45%) SCCM
9 50 (0.72%) Progress Chef
10 46 (0.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 44 (0.63%) Argo
12 42 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
12 42 (0.60%) Puppet
13 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 26 (0.37%) Istio
15 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.27%) Packer
17 18 (0.26%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.23%) SCOM
19 13 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,306 (32.99%) Microsoft
2 632 (9.04%) Databricks
3 360 (5.15%) ServiceNow
4 278 (3.98%) VMware
5 273 (3.91%) Oracle
6 266 (3.81%) Google
7 207 (2.96%) Cisco
8 201 (2.88%) SAP
9 173 (2.48%) OpenAI
10 157 (2.25%) Splunk
11 134 (1.92%) Palo Alto
12 133 (1.90%) CyberArk
13 129 (1.85%) Salesforce
14 120 (1.72%) Foundry
15 95 (1.36%) Dynatrace
16 90 (1.29%) Zscaler
17 74 (1.06%) Okta
18 68 (0.97%) Informatica
19 66 (0.94%) Fortinet
20 63 (0.90%) Citrix