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

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,681 3,814 5,135
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.39% 15.13% 13.75%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.93% 40.02% 42.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,720 2,649 3,764
10th Percentile £370 £350 £355
25th Percentile £431 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -3.14%
75th Percentile £630 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £533
% change year-on-year - -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 155 30 50
10th Percentile £25.38 £24.14 £17.80
25th Percentile £49.03 £27.80 £22.91
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +17.62% -41.67%
75th Percentile £79.50 £76.96 £61.19
90th Percentile £101.84 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £36.75
% change year-on-year +16.75% +34.01% -40.58%

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 15,208 9,531 12,090
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.04% 37.81% 32.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,287 6,462 8,623
10th Percentile £325 £310 £306
25th Percentile £415 £413 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.34% -2.24% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 544 241 337
10th Percentile £16.62 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.20 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £42.69 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.72% +14.32% -31.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £40.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.60 £67.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £28.00 £22.15
% change year-on-year +33.93% +26.41% -36.71%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 3,524 £541 -1.66% 961
North of England +6 962 £501 +5.37% 493
South East +2 837 £513 +2.65% 621
Midlands +3 569 £500 +1.63% 262
North West +8 496 £500 +0.81% 277
South West +7 429 £528 +4.98% 235
West Midlands +1 424 £500 -4.76% 159
Yorkshire +5 386 £500 +5.26% 139
East of England +4 173 £550 -5.17% 179
East Midlands +4 135 £500 +9.59% 103
North East +6 93 £525 +5.00% 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
1 324 (4.85%) SharePoint
2 201 (3.01%) Confluence
3 169 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 166 (2.48%) Apache Spark
5 112 (1.68%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (1.54%) 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 98 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 35 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.42%) 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 96 (1.44%) 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%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,357 (35.28%) AWS
2 1,352 (20.24%) Azure DevOps
3 1,128 (16.88%) GCP
4 854 (12.78%) Entra ID
5 847 (12.68%) Power Platform
6 671 (10.04%) Microsoft 365
7 588 (8.80%) GitHub
8 431 (6.45%) Azure Data Factory
9 354 (5.30%) GitHub Actions
10 323 (4.83%) Serverless
11 281 (4.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 275 (4.12%) SaaS
13 246 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 221 (3.31%) Power Automate
15 214 (3.20%) Dynamics 365
16 211 (3.16%) Azure Monitor
17 208 (3.11%) PaaS
18 199 (2.98%) Snowflake
19 188 (2.81%) PowerApps
20 182 (2.72%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 416 (6.23%) Firewall
2 309 (4.63%) DNS
3 242 (3.62%) VPN
4 227 (3.40%) Network Security
5 189 (2.83%) WAN
6 164 (2.45%) DHCP
7 115 (1.72%) 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
13 69 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 58 (0.87%) Kerberos
15 51 (0.76%) SAN
16 47 (0.70%) SSL
17 43 (0.64%) Wireless
18 42 (0.63%) VXLAN
19 37 (0.55%) Internet
20 36 (0.54%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 588 (8.80%) Power BI
2 394 (5.90%) SQL Server
3 337 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 307 (4.60%) Data Lake
5 236 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
6 184 (2.75%) Azure SQL Database
7 172 (2.57%) NoSQL
8 158 (2.36%) Metadata
9 131 (1.96%) Delta Lake
10 112 (1.68%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.35%) Big Data
12 76 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.11%) Tableau
14 72 (1.08%) MongoDB
15 65 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.82%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.81%) Oracle Database
18 46 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
18 46 (0.69%) Star Schema
19 43 (0.64%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 484 (7.24%) JIRA
2 478 (7.15%) Git
3 309 (4.63%) Jenkins
4 246 (3.68%) GitLab
5 102 (1.53%) 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 23 (0.34%) Gradle
20 22 (0.33%) LoadRunner
General
1 1,686 (25.24%) Social Skills
2 1,328 (19.88%) Finance
3 682 (10.21%) Public Sector
4 622 (9.31%) Analytical Skills
5 390 (5.84%) Banking
6 189 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 155 (2.32%) Legal
8 154 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 147 (2.20%) Retail
10 88 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
11 71 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
12 67 (1.00%) Investment Banking
13 65 (0.97%) Front Office
14 64 (0.96%) Financial Institution
14 64 (0.96%) Law
15 56 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 56 (0.84%) Telecoms
16 54 (0.81%) Marketing
17 53 (0.79%) Manufacturing
18 42 (0.63%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,184 (17.72%) Architect
2 831 (12.44%) Senior
3 804 (12.03%) Developer
4 587 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 526 (7.87%) Data Engineer
6 513 (7.68%) Lead
7 410 (6.14%) Analyst
8 346 (5.18%) Solutions Architect
9 321 (4.80%) DevOps Engineer
10 278 (4.16%) Consultant
11 266 (3.98%) Cloud Engineer
12 235 (3.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 188 (2.81%) Data Architect
14 178 (2.66%) Azure Architect
15 172 (2.57%) Security Engineer
16 169 (2.53%) Platform Engineer
17 158 (2.36%) Technical Architect
18 155 (2.32%) Business Analyst
19 146 (2.19%) Project Manager
20 144 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 516 (7.72%) .NET
2 445 (6.66%) REST
3 268 (4.01%) React
4 246 (3.68%) Kafka
5 227 (3.40%) PySpark
6 210 (3.14%) RESTful
7 205 (3.07%) OAuth
8 169 (2.53%) Node.js
8 169 (2.53%) Spring
9 158 (2.36%) AngularJS
10 143 (2.14%) LDAP
11 139 (2.08%) JSON
11 139 (2.08%) Spring Boot
12 138 (2.07%) SAML
13 126 (1.89%) OpenID
14 115 (1.72%) HTML
15 113 (1.69%) SOAP
16 112 (1.68%) Middleware
17 111 (1.66%) .NET Framework
18 102 (1.53%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 724 (10.84%) Cloud Native
2 287 (4.30%) Onboarding
3 258 (3.86%) Product Ownership
4 214 (3.20%) Data Centre
5 203 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
6 202 (3.02%) Distributed Systems
7 185 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
8 155 (2.32%) Security Posture
9 148 (2.22%) AI Agents
10 140 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
11 138 (2.07%) Public Cloud
12 102 (1.53%) Data Structures
13 89 (1.33%) Management Information System
14 85 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
14 85 (1.27%) Replication
15 72 (1.08%) PKI
16 71 (1.06%) Enterprise Cloud
17 69 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
18 62 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
19 56 (0.84%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 786 (11.76%) Windows
2 337 (5.04%) Linux
3 243 (3.64%) Windows Server
4 101 (1.51%) Windows 10
5 69 (1.03%) Unix
6 63 (0.94%) Apple iOS
7 61 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 60 (0.90%) Mac OS
9 55 (0.82%) Android
10 48 (0.72%) VMS
11 35 (0.52%) Ubuntu
12 24 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
14 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
16 11 (0.16%) CentOS
17 10 (0.15%) Debian
18 6 (0.090%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.090%) Rocky
18 6 (0.090%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,437 (36.48%) DevOps
2 2,055 (30.76%) CI/CD
3 1,609 (24.08%) Agile
4 1,054 (15.78%) AI
5 998 (14.94%) Infrastructure as Code
6 983 (14.71%) Analytics
7 966 (14.46%) Migration
8 926 (13.86%) Problem-Solving
9 785 (11.75%) Stakeholder Management
10 754 (11.29%) Data Modelling
11 670 (10.03%) Continuous Improvement
12 657 (9.83%) Data Pipeline
13 649 (9.71%) Roadmaps
14 633 (9.47%) Business Intelligence
15 604 (9.04%) Containerisation
15 604 (9.04%) ETL
16 573 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 570 (8.53%) Microservices
18 563 (8.43%) Data Engineering
19 510 (7.63%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,592 (23.83%) Python
2 1,387 (20.76%) SQL
3 681 (10.19%) PowerShell
4 548 (8.20%) Java
5 534 (7.99%) C#
6 371 (5.55%) JavaScript
7 249 (3.73%) TypeScript
8 229 (3.43%) Bash
9 219 (3.28%) Bicep
10 88 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 77 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.08%) Go
13 70 (1.05%) Scala
14 41 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 35 (0.52%) R
16 33 (0.49%) Shell Script
17 28 (0.42%) Kotlin
17 28 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) C++
19 20 (0.30%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,646 (24.64%) Security Cleared
2 1,366 (20.45%) SC Cleared
3 490 (7.33%) Degree
4 355 (5.31%) Azure Certification
5 215 (3.22%) CISSP
6 181 (2.71%) DV Cleared
7 176 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
8 165 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
9 162 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
10 157 (2.35%) AWS Certification
11 125 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
12 106 (1.59%) CISM
13 78 (1.17%) CCNP
14 71 (1.06%) PMP
15 66 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 62 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 50 (0.75%) ISTQB
17 50 (0.75%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 472 (7.06%) Data Quality
2 348 (5.21%) QA
3 304 (4.55%) GDPR
4 252 (3.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 236 (3.53%) NIST
6 131 (1.96%) Accessibility
7 95 (1.42%) NCSC
8 84 (1.26%) SLA
9 74 (1.11%) PCI DSS
10 68 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 65 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 55 (0.82%) GRC
13 54 (0.81%) WCAG
14 36 (0.54%) PMO
15 35 (0.52%) HIPAA
16 29 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.34%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.34%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.24%) COBIT
19 15 (0.22%) Solvency II
System Software
1 838 (12.54%) Active Directory
2 683 (10.22%) Docker
3 189 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 125 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
5 121 (1.81%) Virtual Machines
6 91 (1.36%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.88%) vSphere
8 51 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.42%) Firmware
11 20 (0.30%) 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
16 6 (0.090%) KVM
17 5 (0.075%) RACF
17 5 (0.075%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,077 (16.12%) Terraform
2 939 (14.05%) Kubernetes
3 367 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 311 (4.65%) Ansible
5 173 (2.59%) Grafana
6 151 (2.26%) Prometheus
7 147 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
8 93 (1.39%) SCCM
9 69 (1.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.60%) Progress Chef
11 38 (0.57%) 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 2,160 (32.33%) Microsoft
2 639 (9.56%) Databricks
3 317 (4.74%) ServiceNow
4 262 (3.92%) VMware
5 253 (3.79%) Oracle
6 247 (3.70%) Google
7 192 (2.87%) SAP
8 183 (2.74%) Cisco
9 172 (2.57%) OpenAI
10 129 (1.93%) Splunk
11 126 (1.89%) CyberArk
12 125 (1.87%) Salesforce
13 124 (1.86%) Palo Alto
14 112 (1.68%) Foundry
15 88 (1.32%) Okta
16 83 (1.24%) Dynatrace
17 74 (1.11%) Zscaler
18 68 (1.02%) Informatica
19 59 (0.88%) Citrix
20 56 (0.84%) Fortinet