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

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,543 3,753 5,103
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.32% 15.26% 13.61%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.75% 40.47% 42.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,651 2,631 3,756
10th Percentile £365 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 149 26 47
10th Percentile £25.30 £25.73 £17.80
25th Percentile £38.25 £27.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +40.71% -44.44%
75th Percentile £76.75 £77.42 £60.78
90th Percentile £101.18 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £35.00
% change year-on-year +16.75% +40.71% -43.41%

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 14,955 9,274 12,009
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.02% 37.71% 32.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,137 6,320 8,595
10th Percentile £325 £311 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £748
UK median daily rate £510 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 526 225 333
10th Percentile £16.25 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.90% +18.60% -38.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £38.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £36.86 £28.55 £21.64
% change year-on-year +29.09% +31.93% -39.26%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 3,485 £540 -1.82% 863
North of England +5 938 £500 +5.26% 462
South East +3 832 £505 +1.00% 594
Midlands +1 529 £500 - 274
North West +5 475 £500 +4.17% 257
South West +7 419 £538 +4.88% 239
West Midlands +1 392 £500 -4.76% 174
Yorkshire +8 381 £500 +5.26% 125
East of England +7 159 £550 -2.65% 172
East Midlands +5 127 £475 +2.70% 100
North East +5 94 £525 +5.00% 81
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
1 322 (4.92%) SharePoint
2 188 (2.87%) Confluence
3 171 (2.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 163 (2.49%) Apache Spark
5 106 (1.62%) Apache Airflow
6 96 (1.47%) Apache
7 34 (0.52%) SAS
8 25 (0.38%) IIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Appian
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
13 9 (0.14%) Mendix
14 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 90 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 26 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 24 (0.37%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.11%) Revit
9 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.076%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.061%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.061%) Notion
11 4 (0.061%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.015%) InDesign
13 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.015%) Sketch
13 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 93 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 22 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.17%) Maximo
6 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.11%) Shopify
9 6 (0.092%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.092%) SimCorp Dimension
9 6 (0.092%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.076%) Endur
10 5 (0.076%) NEC Housing
10 5 (0.076%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.076%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.076%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 4 (0.061%) R3 Corda
11 4 (0.061%) Ripple
11 4 (0.061%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,264 (34.60%) AWS
2 1,328 (20.30%) Azure DevOps
3 1,093 (16.70%) GCP
4 842 (12.87%) Power Platform
5 829 (12.67%) Entra ID
6 678 (10.36%) Microsoft 365
7 590 (9.02%) GitHub
8 437 (6.68%) Azure Data Factory
9 348 (5.32%) GitHub Actions
10 320 (4.89%) Serverless
11 279 (4.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 259 (3.96%) SaaS
13 239 (3.65%) Azure AKS
14 220 (3.36%) Power Automate
15 217 (3.32%) Dynamics 365
16 212 (3.24%) PaaS
17 205 (3.13%) Azure Monitor
18 189 (2.89%) Snowflake
19 180 (2.75%) PowerApps
20 172 (2.63%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 398 (6.08%) Firewall
2 299 (4.57%) DNS
3 229 (3.50%) VPN
4 219 (3.35%) Network Security
5 188 (2.87%) WAN
6 162 (2.48%) DHCP
7 115 (1.76%) LAN
8 97 (1.48%) SD-WAN
9 95 (1.45%) TCP/IP
10 84 (1.28%) BGP
11 75 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
12 67 (1.02%) OSPF
12 67 (1.02%) VLAN
13 58 (0.89%) Kerberos
14 49 (0.75%) SAN
15 45 (0.69%) SSL
16 44 (0.67%) VXLAN
17 43 (0.66%) Wireless
18 33 (0.50%) Internet
18 33 (0.50%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 579 (8.85%) Power BI
2 391 (5.98%) SQL Server
3 332 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
4 322 (4.92%) Data Lake
5 225 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 183 (2.80%) Azure SQL Database
7 167 (2.55%) NoSQL
8 149 (2.28%) Metadata
9 134 (2.05%) Delta Lake
10 104 (1.59%) Relational Database
11 87 (1.33%) Big Data
12 85 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.15%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.13%) Tableau
15 64 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
16 54 (0.83%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.83%) Oracle Database
17 47 (0.72%) Spark SQL
18 46 (0.70%) Star Schema
19 45 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 467 (7.14%) Git
2 453 (6.92%) JIRA
3 292 (4.46%) Jenkins
4 246 (3.76%) GitLab
5 96 (1.47%) Selenium
6 55 (0.84%) JMeter
7 52 (0.79%) Postman
8 50 (0.76%) JUnit
9 49 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 42 (0.64%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.63%) MLflow
12 39 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.49%) Visual Studio
14 31 (0.47%) WebDriver
15 28 (0.43%) Maven
16 27 (0.41%) Artifactory
16 27 (0.41%) Cypress.io
16 27 (0.41%) Gatling
17 23 (0.35%) Gradle
17 23 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,664 (25.43%) Social Skills
2 1,285 (19.64%) Finance
3 652 (9.96%) Public Sector
4 605 (9.25%) Analytical Skills
5 375 (5.73%) Banking
6 195 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
7 149 (2.28%) Legal
8 135 (2.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 126 (1.93%) Retail
10 84 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
11 68 (1.04%) Investment Banking
12 66 (1.01%) Law
13 63 (0.96%) Financial Institution
13 63 (0.96%) Front Office
14 62 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
15 57 (0.87%) Marketing
16 56 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
17 49 (0.75%) Telecoms
18 41 (0.63%) Manufacturing
19 40 (0.61%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,138 (17.39%) Architect
2 807 (12.33%) Senior
3 775 (11.84%) Developer
4 580 (8.86%) Azure Engineer
5 519 (7.93%) Data Engineer
6 496 (7.58%) Lead
7 404 (6.17%) Analyst
8 329 (5.03%) DevOps Engineer
9 327 (5.00%) Solutions Architect
10 271 (4.14%) Consultant
11 248 (3.79%) Cloud Engineer
12 234 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 180 (2.75%) Data Architect
14 177 (2.71%) Azure Architect
15 176 (2.69%) Security Engineer
16 169 (2.58%) Platform Engineer
17 151 (2.31%) Business Analyst
18 146 (2.23%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 145 (2.22%) Senior Developer
19 145 (2.22%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 495 (7.57%) .NET
2 444 (6.79%) REST
3 264 (4.03%) React
4 245 (3.74%) Kafka
5 219 (3.35%) PySpark
6 201 (3.07%) RESTful
7 193 (2.95%) OAuth
8 174 (2.66%) Node.js
9 166 (2.54%) Spring
10 159 (2.43%) LDAP
11 156 (2.38%) AngularJS
12 136 (2.08%) Spring Boot
13 131 (2.00%) JSON
13 131 (2.00%) SAML
14 126 (1.93%) SOAP
15 120 (1.83%) Middleware
16 118 (1.80%) OpenID
17 115 (1.76%) HTML
18 102 (1.56%) .NET Framework
19 99 (1.51%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 674 (10.30%) Cloud Native
2 279 (4.26%) Onboarding
3 243 (3.71%) Product Ownership
4 206 (3.15%) Data Centre
5 196 (3.00%) Hybrid Cloud
6 175 (2.67%) Distributed Systems
7 171 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
8 156 (2.38%) Security Posture
9 153 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
10 138 (2.11%) AI Agents
10 138 (2.11%) Public Cloud
11 95 (1.45%) Data Structures
12 85 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
13 82 (1.25%) Replication
14 76 (1.16%) Management Information System
15 66 (1.01%) Enterprise Cloud
15 66 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
16 65 (0.99%) PKI
17 59 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
18 58 (0.89%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 772 (11.80%) Windows
2 327 (5.00%) Linux
3 238 (3.64%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 68 (1.04%) Unix
6 66 (1.01%) Apple iOS
7 62 (0.95%) Mac OS
8 55 (0.84%) Android
8 55 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 49 (0.75%) VMS
10 30 (0.46%) Ubuntu
11 26 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
12 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.18%) CentOS
13 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
14 10 (0.15%) Debian
15 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.092%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,403 (36.73%) DevOps
2 2,005 (30.64%) CI/CD
3 1,509 (23.06%) Agile
4 996 (15.22%) AI
5 969 (14.81%) Infrastructure as Code
6 960 (14.67%) Analytics
7 934 (14.27%) Migration
8 927 (14.17%) Problem-Solving
9 738 (11.28%) Stakeholder Management
10 731 (11.17%) Data Modelling
11 643 (9.83%) Data Pipeline
12 636 (9.72%) Continuous Improvement
13 631 (9.64%) Business Intelligence
14 615 (9.40%) ETL
15 613 (9.37%) Roadmaps
16 577 (8.82%) Containerisation
17 557 (8.51%) Microservices
18 554 (8.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 536 (8.19%) Data Engineering
20 485 (7.41%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,543 (23.58%) Python
2 1,369 (20.92%) SQL
3 689 (10.53%) PowerShell
4 539 (8.24%) Java
5 525 (8.02%) C#
6 356 (5.44%) JavaScript
7 232 (3.55%) TypeScript
8 222 (3.39%) Bash
9 210 (3.21%) Bicep
10 89 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 78 (1.19%) T-SQL
12 73 (1.12%) Scala
13 69 (1.05%) Go
14 41 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
15 35 (0.53%) R
16 34 (0.52%) Shell Script
17 32 (0.49%) PL/SQL
18 26 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 21 (0.32%) C++
20 14 (0.21%) Rust
Qualifications
1 1,641 (25.08%) Security Cleared
2 1,379 (21.08%) SC Cleared
3 464 (7.09%) Degree
4 358 (5.47%) Azure Certification
5 203 (3.10%) CISSP
6 170 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
7 163 (2.49%) DV Cleared
8 158 (2.41%) Microsoft Certification
9 157 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
10 146 (2.23%) AWS Certification
11 124 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
12 109 (1.67%) CISM
13 72 (1.10%) CCNP
14 71 (1.09%) PMP
15 65 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 60 (0.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 47 (0.72%) ISTQB
18 43 (0.66%) Master's Degree
18 43 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
19 40 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 458 (7.00%) Data Quality
2 322 (4.92%) QA
3 300 (4.59%) GDPR
4 250 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 241 (3.68%) NIST
6 117 (1.79%) Accessibility
7 88 (1.34%) NCSC
8 86 (1.31%) SLA
9 76 (1.16%) PCI DSS
10 65 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
11 64 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 51 (0.78%) GRC
13 49 (0.75%) WCAG
14 40 (0.61%) PMO
15 35 (0.53%) HIPAA
16 27 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
18 22 (0.34%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.24%) COBIT
19 16 (0.24%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 843 (12.88%) Active Directory
2 675 (10.32%) Docker
3 191 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 123 (1.88%) Virtual Desktop
5 110 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 95 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.96%) vSphere
8 53 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.41%) Firmware
10 26 (0.40%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.26%) Postfix
13 10 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.11%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.092%) KVM
16 6 (0.092%) RACF
17 5 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.061%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,039 (15.88%) Terraform
2 905 (13.83%) Kubernetes
3 363 (5.55%) Microsoft Intune
4 298 (4.55%) Ansible
5 179 (2.74%) Grafana
6 154 (2.35%) Prometheus
7 142 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
8 94 (1.44%) SCCM
9 71 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
11 37 (0.57%) Progress Chef
12 35 (0.53%) Argo
12 35 (0.53%) Puppet
13 33 (0.50%) Istio
14 32 (0.49%) FortiGate
15 24 (0.37%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.24%) Packer
18 15 (0.23%) linkerd
19 14 (0.21%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,125 (32.48%) Microsoft
2 631 (9.64%) Databricks
3 302 (4.62%) ServiceNow
4 264 (4.03%) VMware
5 250 (3.82%) Oracle
6 231 (3.53%) Google
7 186 (2.84%) SAP
8 179 (2.74%) Cisco
9 164 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 137 (2.09%) Splunk
11 135 (2.06%) CyberArk
12 126 (1.93%) Palo Alto
13 111 (1.70%) Salesforce
14 109 (1.67%) Foundry
15 84 (1.28%) Okta
16 82 (1.25%) Dynatrace
17 66 (1.01%) Zscaler
18 64 (0.98%) Informatica
19 61 (0.93%) Citrix
20 60 (0.92%) Red Hat