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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,761 3,877 5,119
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.42% 15.12% 13.79%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.08% 40.15% 42.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,759 2,684 3,754
10th Percentile £366 £350 £355
25th Percentile £431 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £630 £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 157 34 49
10th Percentile £25.23 £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 £79.00 £76.96 £61.60
90th Percentile £101.51 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year -0.86% +50.65% -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 15,339 9,656 12,043
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.99% 37.67% 32.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,333 6,518 8,597
10th Percentile £325 £310 £306
25th Percentile £415 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +2.18% -4.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 553 250 331
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.08 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.21 £17.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £41.06 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.26% +14.32% -31.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £41.09 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.20 £67.88 £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 1 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 1 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 1 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 3,539 £545 -0.95% 1,082
North of England +6 995 £503 +5.84% 545
South East +2 847 £514 +2.80% 637
Midlands +3 588 £500 +1.32% 312
North West +7 517 £500 +0.81% 305
West Midlands +1 434 £500 -4.76% 182
South West +7 432 £528 +5.50% 255
Yorkshire +5 397 £505 +6.37% 168
East of England +6 178 £550 - 178
East Midlands +4 144 £500 +8.11% 130
North East +5 94 £525 +5.00% 79
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
1 336 (4.97%) SharePoint
2 205 (3.03%) Confluence
3 171 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 166 (2.46%) 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%) Mendix
13 8 (0.12%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) HCL Notes
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.089%) ArcGIS
16 5 (0.074%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 97 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 65 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.40%) 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%) Acrobat
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%) Weka
Business Applications
1 95 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.01%) 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%) Shopify
7 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.089%) Endur
8 6 (0.089%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.089%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.074%) Magento
9 5 (0.074%) Oracle EBS
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 2,385 (35.28%) AWS
2 1,375 (20.34%) Azure DevOps
3 1,131 (16.73%) GCP
4 871 (12.88%) Entra ID
5 855 (12.65%) Power Platform
6 684 (10.12%) Microsoft 365
7 595 (8.80%) GitHub
8 422 (6.24%) Azure Data Factory
9 358 (5.30%) GitHub Actions
10 323 (4.78%) Serverless
11 280 (4.14%) SaaS
12 278 (4.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 249 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 225 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
15 224 (3.31%) Power Automate
16 217 (3.21%) Dynamics 365
17 213 (3.15%) PaaS
18 202 (2.99%) Snowflake
19 196 (2.90%) PowerApps
20 186 (2.75%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 418 (6.18%) Firewall
2 314 (4.64%) DNS
3 252 (3.73%) VPN
4 231 (3.42%) Network Security
5 194 (2.87%) WAN
6 166 (2.46%) DHCP
7 120 (1.77%) LAN
8 110 (1.63%) TCP/IP
9 101 (1.49%) SD-WAN
10 97 (1.43%) BGP
11 77 (1.14%) OSPF
12 70 (1.04%) VLAN
12 70 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
13 57 (0.84%) Kerberos
14 55 (0.81%) SSL
15 52 (0.77%) SAN
16 44 (0.65%) Wireless
17 42 (0.62%) VXLAN
18 39 (0.58%) IPsec
19 37 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 592 (8.76%) Power BI
2 408 (6.03%) SQL Server
3 335 (4.95%) Data Warehouse
4 303 (4.48%) Data Lake
5 238 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 179 (2.65%) Azure SQL Database
7 177 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 156 (2.31%) Metadata
9 132 (1.95%) Delta Lake
10 115 (1.70%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.35%) Big Data
12 78 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 76 (1.12%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.08%) Tableau
15 64 (0.95%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.84%) BigQuery
17 55 (0.81%) Oracle Database
18 51 (0.75%) MySQL
19 46 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
20 44 (0.65%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 489 (7.23%) JIRA
2 488 (7.22%) Git
3 315 (4.66%) Jenkins
4 249 (3.68%) GitLab
5 102 (1.51%) Selenium
6 58 (0.86%) Postman
7 57 (0.84%) JMeter
8 54 (0.80%) JUnit
9 51 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 43 (0.64%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 38 (0.56%) MLflow
13 37 (0.55%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.52%) WebDriver
15 31 (0.46%) Cypress.io
16 29 (0.43%) Maven
17 26 (0.38%) Gatling
18 25 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
19 24 (0.35%) LoadRunner
20 23 (0.34%) Gradle
General
1 1,699 (25.13%) Social Skills
2 1,344 (19.88%) Finance
3 689 (10.19%) Public Sector
4 639 (9.45%) Analytical Skills
5 393 (5.81%) Banking
6 191 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 157 (2.32%) Legal
8 156 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 153 (2.26%) Retail
10 91 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
11 73 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
12 68 (1.01%) Investment Banking
13 67 (0.99%) Front Office
14 65 (0.96%) Financial Institution
15 64 (0.95%) Law
16 58 (0.86%) Telecoms
17 56 (0.83%) Marketing
18 55 (0.81%) Manufacturing
18 55 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
19 41 (0.61%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,207 (17.85%) Architect
2 838 (12.39%) Senior
3 815 (12.05%) Developer
4 592 (8.76%) Azure Engineer
5 531 (7.85%) Data Engineer
6 514 (7.60%) Lead
7 410 (6.06%) Analyst
8 353 (5.22%) Solutions Architect
9 325 (4.81%) DevOps Engineer
10 283 (4.19%) Consultant
11 270 (3.99%) Cloud Engineer
12 235 (3.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 192 (2.84%) Data Architect
14 185 (2.74%) Azure Architect
15 175 (2.59%) Platform Engineer
16 171 (2.53%) Security Engineer
17 161 (2.38%) Technical Architect
18 157 (2.32%) Business Analyst
19 147 (2.17%) Project Manager
19 147 (2.17%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 523 (7.74%) .NET
2 450 (6.66%) REST
3 266 (3.93%) React
4 258 (3.82%) Kafka
5 226 (3.34%) PySpark
6 212 (3.14%) RESTful
7 206 (3.05%) OAuth
8 173 (2.56%) Spring
9 169 (2.50%) Node.js
10 158 (2.34%) AngularJS
11 143 (2.12%) Spring Boot
12 140 (2.07%) JSON
13 138 (2.04%) SAML
14 137 (2.03%) LDAP
15 126 (1.86%) OpenID
16 118 (1.75%) HTML
17 114 (1.69%) .NET Framework
18 112 (1.66%) Middleware
19 109 (1.61%) SOAP
20 105 (1.55%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 727 (10.75%) Cloud Native
2 296 (4.38%) Onboarding
3 259 (3.83%) Product Ownership
4 215 (3.18%) Data Centre
5 207 (3.06%) Distributed Systems
5 207 (3.06%) Hybrid Cloud
6 186 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
7 152 (2.25%) Security Posture
8 151 (2.23%) AI Agents
9 143 (2.12%) Enterprise Software
10 134 (1.98%) Public Cloud
11 102 (1.51%) Data Structures
12 92 (1.36%) Management Information System
13 91 (1.35%) Replication
14 86 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
15 74 (1.09%) Enterprise Cloud
16 73 (1.08%) PKI
17 69 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
18 63 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
19 54 (0.80%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 804 (11.89%) Windows
2 344 (5.09%) Linux
3 253 (3.74%) Windows Server
4 100 (1.48%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.09%) Unix
6 61 (0.90%) Mac OS
6 61 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 60 (0.89%) Apple iOS
8 55 (0.81%) Android
9 45 (0.67%) VMS
10 35 (0.52%) 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 2,473 (36.58%) DevOps
2 2,079 (30.75%) CI/CD
3 1,627 (24.06%) Agile
4 1,063 (15.72%) AI
5 1,010 (14.94%) Infrastructure as Code
6 987 (14.60%) Analytics
7 970 (14.35%) Migration
8 932 (13.78%) Problem-Solving
9 811 (12.00%) Stakeholder Management
10 754 (11.15%) Data Modelling
11 681 (10.07%) Continuous Improvement
12 670 (9.91%) Data Pipeline
13 657 (9.72%) Roadmaps
14 636 (9.41%) Business Intelligence
15 615 (9.10%) Containerisation
16 602 (8.90%) ETL
17 582 (8.61%) Microservices
18 579 (8.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 570 (8.43%) Data Engineering
20 516 (7.63%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,600 (23.67%) Python
2 1,391 (20.57%) SQL
3 687 (10.16%) PowerShell
4 560 (8.28%) Java
5 538 (7.96%) C#
6 372 (5.50%) JavaScript
7 249 (3.68%) TypeScript
8 239 (3.53%) Bash
9 233 (3.45%) Bicep
10 86 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.21%) T-SQL
12 73 (1.08%) Go
13 69 (1.02%) Scala
14 43 (0.64%) 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 (24.58%) Security Cleared
2 1,371 (20.28%) SC Cleared
3 500 (7.40%) Degree
4 362 (5.35%) Azure Certification
5 219 (3.24%) CISSP
6 188 (2.78%) DV Cleared
7 178 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
8 173 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
9 172 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
10 157 (2.32%) AWS Certification
11 130 (1.92%) BPSS Clearance
12 106 (1.57%) CISM
13 81 (1.20%) CCNP
14 68 (1.01%) PMP
15 64 (0.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 63 (0.93%) PMI Certification
17 50 (0.74%) Master's Degree
18 48 (0.71%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 470 (6.95%) Data Quality
2 349 (5.16%) QA
3 305 (4.51%) GDPR
4 250 (3.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 239 (3.53%) NIST
6 136 (2.01%) Accessibility
7 95 (1.41%) NCSC
8 85 (1.26%) SLA
9 73 (1.08%) PCI DSS
10 69 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 56 (0.83%) WCAG
13 55 (0.81%) GRC
14 37 (0.55%) PMO
15 35 (0.52%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.35%) NIST 800
18 23 (0.34%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
20 16 (0.24%) COBIT
System Software
1 849 (12.56%) Active Directory
2 699 (10.34%) Docker
3 191 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 128 (1.89%) Virtual Desktop
5 126 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
6 90 (1.33%) Hyper-V
7 60 (0.89%) vSphere
8 50 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.41%) Firmware
11 22 (0.33%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.10%) IAG
16 6 (0.089%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.074%) KVM
17 5 (0.074%) RACF
17 5 (0.074%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,094 (16.18%) Terraform
2 961 (14.21%) Kubernetes
3 378 (5.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 315 (4.66%) Ansible
5 178 (2.63%) Grafana
6 155 (2.29%) Prometheus
7 148 (2.19%) Single Sign-On
8 92 (1.36%) 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 35 (0.52%) 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 2,197 (32.50%) Microsoft
2 633 (9.36%) Databricks
3 325 (4.81%) ServiceNow
4 263 (3.89%) VMware
5 257 (3.80%) Oracle
6 247 (3.65%) Google
7 191 (2.83%) SAP
8 188 (2.78%) Cisco
9 171 (2.53%) OpenAI
10 133 (1.97%) Splunk
11 129 (1.91%) Palo Alto
12 127 (1.88%) Salesforce
13 124 (1.83%) CyberArk
14 116 (1.72%) Foundry
15 90 (1.33%) Okta
16 88 (1.30%) Dynatrace
17 74 (1.09%) Zscaler
18 67 (0.99%) Informatica
19 62 (0.92%) Citrix
20 59 (0.87%) Fortinet