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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,166 3,747 4,927
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.32% 15.42% 13.33%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.10% 41.33% 41.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,447 2,674 3,618
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £642
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 26 48
10th Percentile £25.47 £21.78 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.45
Median hourly rate £57.50 £57.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.88% +62.86% -36.36%
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 14,305 9,067 11,772
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.54% 37.31% 31.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,853 6,353 8,480
10th Percentile £319 £313 £290
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £743 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 445 193 321
10th Percentile £15.96 £15.17 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.45 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +70.13% +27.35% -35.70%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.00 £32.50
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.75 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £40.25 £27.50 £20.99
% change year-on-year +46.36% +31.05% -40.04%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 3,308 £533 -3.18% 827
North of England +3 848 £500 +5.26% 505
South East +1 794 £500 -4.76% 585
Midlands -3 503 £491 -5.85% 252
North West +2 455 £500 - 266
South West +6 380 £500 -4.76% 234
West Midlands 0 364 £500 -4.76% 152
Yorkshire +4 343 £500 +17.65% 154
East of England +2 150 £545 -6.03% 182
East Midlands +1 129 £450 -5.26% 99
North East 0 59 £525 +3.70% 86
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
1 284 (4.61%) SharePoint
2 178 (2.89%) Microsoft Exchange
3 174 (2.82%) Apache Spark
4 165 (2.68%) Confluence
5 94 (1.52%) Apache
6 88 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
7 20 (0.32%) 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 11 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.081%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.081%) nginx
14 5 (0.081%) Umbraco
Applications
1 99 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 58 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.68%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.081%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.065%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.065%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.049%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.049%) Weka
11 2 (0.032%) Revit
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 97 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 62 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.18%) Maximo
3 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
3 11 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
4 9 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
5 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.081%) Cloudability
6 5 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
7 4 (0.065%) Oracle FAH
7 4 (0.065%) SAP BPC
7 4 (0.065%) Unit4 Business World
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,129 (34.53%) AWS
2 1,272 (20.63%) Azure DevOps
3 1,166 (18.91%) GCP
4 799 (12.96%) Power Platform
5 767 (12.44%) Entra ID
6 648 (10.51%) Microsoft 365
7 581 (9.42%) GitHub
8 466 (7.56%) Azure Data Factory
9 330 (5.35%) GitHub Actions
10 327 (5.30%) Serverless
11 303 (4.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 244 (3.96%) SaaS
13 240 (3.89%) Azure AKS
14 232 (3.76%) Dynamics 365
15 217 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
16 212 (3.44%) Power Automate
17 206 (3.34%) PaaS
18 185 (3.00%) Azure Functions
18 185 (3.00%) Azure Logic Apps
19 174 (2.82%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 401 (6.50%) Firewall
2 269 (4.36%) DNS
3 240 (3.89%) VPN
4 210 (3.41%) Network Security
5 158 (2.56%) WAN
6 144 (2.34%) DHCP
7 115 (1.87%) LAN
8 85 (1.38%) TCP/IP
9 77 (1.25%) SD-WAN
9 77 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
10 69 (1.12%) VLAN
11 65 (1.05%) Kerberos
12 60 (0.97%) BGP
13 53 (0.86%) OSPF
14 42 (0.68%) SAN
15 38 (0.62%) Wireless
16 34 (0.55%) HTTP
16 34 (0.55%) SSL
17 30 (0.49%) Internet
17 30 (0.49%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 558 (9.05%) Power BI
2 370 (6.00%) SQL Server
3 335 (5.43%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.90%) Data Lake
5 213 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
6 206 (3.34%) Azure SQL Database
7 174 (2.82%) NoSQL
8 145 (2.35%) Metadata
9 138 (2.24%) Delta Lake
10 98 (1.59%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 89 (1.44%) Big Data
13 78 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 75 (1.22%) Tableau
15 65 (1.05%) Oracle Database
16 60 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
17 56 (0.91%) BigQuery
18 49 (0.79%) Star Schema
19 46 (0.75%) MySQL
20 44 (0.71%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 453 (7.35%) Git
2 425 (6.89%) JIRA
3 298 (4.83%) Jenkins
4 232 (3.76%) GitLab
5 101 (1.64%) Selenium
6 64 (1.04%) Postman
7 57 (0.92%) JUnit
8 54 (0.88%) Cucumber
9 52 (0.84%) MLflow
10 47 (0.76%) JMeter
11 42 (0.68%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.57%) SonarQube
13 34 (0.55%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.54%) Cypress.io
15 25 (0.41%) Bitbucket
15 25 (0.41%) TestRail
16 24 (0.39%) Gatling
16 24 (0.39%) Visual Studio
16 24 (0.39%) WebDriver
17 22 (0.36%) Oracle APEX
General
1 1,642 (26.63%) Social Skills
2 1,149 (18.63%) Finance
3 645 (10.46%) Public Sector
4 593 (9.62%) Analytical Skills
5 352 (5.71%) Banking
6 195 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
7 141 (2.29%) Legal
8 94 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 87 (1.41%) Retail
10 83 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
11 71 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
12 68 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
13 65 (1.05%) Financial Institution
13 65 (1.05%) Marketing
14 61 (0.99%) Front Office
14 61 (0.99%) Investment Banking
15 59 (0.96%) Law
16 54 (0.88%) Telecoms
17 44 (0.71%) Local Government
18 36 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,013 (16.43%) Architect
2 787 (12.76%) Developer
3 746 (12.10%) Senior
4 574 (9.31%) Azure Engineer
5 533 (8.64%) Data Engineer
6 462 (7.49%) Lead
7 385 (6.24%) Analyst
8 318 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
9 261 (4.23%) Solutions Architect
10 243 (3.94%) Consultant
11 199 (3.23%) Cloud Engineer
12 193 (3.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 163 (2.64%) Azure Architect
14 158 (2.56%) Security Engineer
15 152 (2.47%) Platform Engineer
16 135 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 133 (2.16%) Data Architect
17 133 (2.16%) Technical Architect
18 129 (2.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 128 (2.08%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 466 (7.56%) .NET
2 394 (6.39%) REST
3 260 (4.22%) React
4 247 (4.01%) Kafka
5 226 (3.67%) PySpark
6 205 (3.32%) Node.js
7 182 (2.95%) RESTful
8 180 (2.92%) Spring
9 175 (2.84%) OAuth
10 157 (2.55%) AngularJS
10 157 (2.55%) LDAP
11 143 (2.32%) Spring Boot
12 122 (1.98%) JSON
13 121 (1.96%) HTML
13 121 (1.96%) SOAP
14 120 (1.95%) SAML
15 117 (1.90%) Middleware
16 110 (1.78%) OpenID
17 99 (1.61%) PyTorch
17 99 (1.61%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 594 (9.63%) Cloud Native
2 246 (3.99%) Onboarding
3 216 (3.50%) Product Ownership
4 182 (2.95%) Hybrid Cloud
5 159 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
6 152 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
7 149 (2.42%) Security Posture
8 146 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
9 145 (2.35%) Data Centre
10 137 (2.22%) Public Cloud
11 112 (1.82%) AI Agents
12 83 (1.35%) Replication
13 82 (1.33%) Data Structures
14 69 (1.12%) Management Information System
15 68 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
16 56 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
16 56 (0.91%) PKI
17 53 (0.86%) Low-Code
18 49 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
19 44 (0.71%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 681 (11.04%) Windows
2 305 (4.95%) Linux
3 214 (3.47%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.82%) Windows 10
5 61 (0.99%) VMS
6 58 (0.94%) Unix
7 53 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 48 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 41 (0.66%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.52%) Android
11 20 (0.32%) 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%) AIX
16 7 (0.11%) CentOS
16 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.097%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.097%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,319 (37.61%) DevOps
2 1,899 (30.80%) CI/CD
3 1,437 (23.31%) Agile
4 945 (15.33%) Analytics
5 939 (15.23%) Problem-Solving
6 872 (14.14%) Infrastructure as Code
7 870 (14.11%) AI
8 835 (13.54%) Migration
9 710 (11.51%) Data Modelling
10 619 (10.04%) Business Intelligence
11 612 (9.93%) Data Pipeline
12 606 (9.83%) Stakeholder Management
13 590 (9.57%) Continuous Improvement
14 588 (9.54%) Containerisation
15 576 (9.34%) ETL
16 541 (8.77%) Data Engineering
16 541 (8.77%) Microservices
17 504 (8.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 503 (8.16%) Roadmaps
19 470 (7.62%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,546 (25.07%) Python
2 1,375 (22.30%) SQL
3 664 (10.77%) PowerShell
4 532 (8.63%) Java
5 525 (8.51%) C#
6 386 (6.26%) JavaScript
7 229 (3.71%) TypeScript
8 215 (3.49%) Bash
9 199 (3.23%) Bicep
10 96 (1.56%) Scala
11 80 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 77 (1.25%) Go
13 73 (1.18%) T-SQL
14 61 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
15 60 (0.97%) PL/SQL
16 41 (0.66%) R
17 36 (0.58%) Shell Script
18 21 (0.34%) C++
19 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,560 (25.30%) Security Cleared
2 1,303 (21.13%) SC Cleared
3 445 (7.22%) Degree
4 354 (5.74%) Azure Certification
5 183 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 162 (2.63%) CISSP
7 143 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 131 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
9 123 (1.99%) DV Cleared
10 120 (1.95%) AWS Certification
11 102 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
12 94 (1.52%) CISM
13 70 (1.14%) CCNP
14 60 (0.97%) PMP
15 57 (0.92%) PMI Certification
16 56 (0.91%) Master's Degree
17 55 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
18 50 (0.81%) ISTQB
19 39 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.58%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 447 (7.25%) Data Quality
2 342 (5.55%) GDPR
3 335 (5.43%) QA
4 249 (4.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 224 (3.63%) NIST
6 90 (1.46%) Accessibility
7 80 (1.30%) PCI DSS
8 78 (1.27%) NCSC
9 59 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 56 (0.91%) SLA
11 51 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
12 48 (0.78%) PMO
13 39 (0.63%) GRC
14 32 (0.52%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.49%) WCAG
16 22 (0.36%) ISO 20022
16 22 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 19 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 18 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 16 (0.26%) PSD2
System Software
1 801 (12.99%) Active Directory
2 697 (11.30%) Docker
3 173 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.74%) Virtual Machines
5 97 (1.57%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 58 (0.94%) vSphere
8 35 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 23 (0.37%) Firmware
10 21 (0.34%) VMware NSX
11 18 (0.29%) NFS
12 11 (0.18%) Postfix
13 6 (0.097%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.097%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.097%) RACF
13 6 (0.097%) Varnish
14 5 (0.081%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 5 (0.081%) HDFS
14 5 (0.081%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 5 (0.081%) Snort
Systems Management
1 979 (15.88%) Terraform
2 922 (14.95%) Kubernetes
3 334 (5.42%) Microsoft Intune
4 276 (4.48%) Ansible
5 172 (2.79%) Grafana
6 144 (2.34%) Prometheus
7 137 (2.22%) Single Sign-On
8 103 (1.67%) SCCM
9 66 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.57%) Istio
11 34 (0.55%) Argo
12 32 (0.52%) Puppet
13 27 (0.44%) Progress Chef
14 23 (0.37%) FortiGate
15 22 (0.36%) vCenter Server
16 21 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
17 17 (0.28%) HP ALM
17 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
18 15 (0.24%) linkerd
19 14 (0.23%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,026 (32.86%) Microsoft
2 623 (10.10%) Databricks
3 283 (4.59%) Oracle
4 275 (4.46%) Google
5 269 (4.36%) ServiceNow
6 249 (4.04%) VMware
7 178 (2.89%) SAP
8 161 (2.61%) OpenAI
9 157 (2.55%) Cisco
10 140 (2.27%) Splunk
11 128 (2.08%) CyberArk
12 104 (1.69%) Foundry
13 93 (1.51%) Palo Alto
14 89 (1.44%) Salesforce
15 81 (1.31%) Okta
16 67 (1.09%) BeyondTrust
17 66 (1.07%) Citrix
18 63 (1.02%) Dynatrace
19 60 (0.97%) IBM
19 60 (0.97%) Informatica