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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,105 3,816 4,955
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.38% 15.53% 13.29%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.86% 41.43% 41.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,410 2,708 3,639
10th Percentile £363 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -0.43% -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £624 £640 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 28 50
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £53.28 £26.45 £22.53
Median hourly rate £57.50 £57.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.88% +62.86% -35.39%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.49 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £86.00 £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 14,244 9,210 11,904
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.88% 37.47% 31.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,820 6,447 8,583
10th Percentile £315 £313 £284
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.07% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 439 194 320
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.02 £18.13 £15.88
Median hourly rate £46.00 £26.48 £20.87
Median % change year-on-year +73.75% +26.86% -29.25%
75th Percentile £67.84 £42.74 £32.88
90th Percentile £81.00 £74.63 £60.15
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £27.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +55.22% +30.95% -37.78%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 3,285 £533 -3.18% 921
North of England +3 831 £500 +5.26% 542
South East +2 789 £500 -4.76% 599
Midlands -2 490 £490 -3.92% 281
North West +2 448 £500 - 284
South West +6 377 £500 -4.76% 242
West Midlands +1 354 £500 -4.76% 167
Yorkshire +3 339 £500 +17.65% 162
East of England +8 150 £540 -8.47% 197
East Midlands +3 126 £450 -5.26% 113
North East -2 51 £525 +3.70% 98
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
1 283 (4.64%) SharePoint
2 179 (2.93%) Microsoft Exchange
3 169 (2.77%) Apache Spark
4 161 (2.64%) Confluence
5 94 (1.54%) Apache
6 87 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) SAS
8 19 (0.31%) IIS
9 14 (0.23%) Appian
9 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.21%) Camunda
10 13 (0.21%) CMS
10 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.21%) Mendix
11 12 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.098%) WebLogic
15 5 (0.082%) BizTalk Server
15 5 (0.082%) nginx
Applications
1 98 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.67%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.098%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.082%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.082%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.066%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.066%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.066%) Weka
11 3 (0.049%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) Revit
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 100 (1.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.18%) Maximo
3 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.098%) Dynamics AX
8 5 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.066%) Cloudability
9 4 (0.066%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.066%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.066%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.066%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.049%) Elite 3E
10 3 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
10 3 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 3 (0.049%) Shopify
10 3 (0.049%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,108 (34.53%) AWS
2 1,275 (20.88%) Azure DevOps
3 1,162 (19.03%) GCP
4 797 (13.05%) Power Platform
5 771 (12.63%) Entra ID
6 653 (10.70%) Microsoft 365
7 580 (9.50%) GitHub
8 464 (7.60%) Azure Data Factory
9 333 (5.45%) Serverless
10 330 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
11 302 (4.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 247 (4.05%) SaaS
13 239 (3.91%) Azure AKS
14 233 (3.82%) Dynamics 365
15 222 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
16 212 (3.47%) Power Automate
17 209 (3.42%) PaaS
18 191 (3.13%) Azure Functions
19 189 (3.10%) Azure Logic Apps
20 171 (2.80%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 382 (6.26%) Firewall
2 263 (4.31%) DNS
3 232 (3.80%) VPN
4 205 (3.36%) Network Security
5 152 (2.49%) WAN
6 146 (2.39%) DHCP
7 116 (1.90%) LAN
8 89 (1.46%) TCP/IP
9 72 (1.18%) VLAN
10 70 (1.15%) SD-WAN
10 70 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
11 66 (1.08%) Kerberos
12 47 (0.77%) BGP
13 41 (0.67%) OSPF
14 38 (0.62%) SAN
15 37 (0.61%) SSL
16 36 (0.59%) Wireless
17 31 (0.51%) HTTP
17 31 (0.51%) Internet
18 27 (0.44%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 553 (9.06%) Power BI
2 370 (6.06%) SQL Server
3 338 (5.54%) Data Warehouse
4 296 (4.85%) Data Lake
5 213 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
6 205 (3.36%) Azure SQL Database
7 179 (2.93%) NoSQL
8 147 (2.41%) Metadata
9 137 (2.24%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.57%) Relational Database
11 94 (1.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (1.43%) Big Data
13 80 (1.31%) MongoDB
14 76 (1.24%) Tableau
15 64 (1.05%) Oracle Database
16 59 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
17 54 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 48 (0.79%) Star Schema
19 46 (0.75%) MySQL
20 44 (0.72%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 449 (7.35%) Git
2 421 (6.90%) JIRA
3 300 (4.91%) Jenkins
4 220 (3.60%) GitLab
5 101 (1.65%) Selenium
6 66 (1.08%) Postman
7 57 (0.93%) JUnit
8 55 (0.90%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.82%) MLflow
10 47 (0.77%) JMeter
11 41 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 34 (0.56%) Artifactory
13 33 (0.54%) Cypress.io
13 33 (0.54%) SonarQube
14 31 (0.51%) Oracle APEX
15 28 (0.46%) TestRail
16 26 (0.43%) Visual Studio
17 24 (0.39%) Gatling
18 23 (0.38%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
General
1 1,657 (27.14%) Social Skills
2 1,145 (18.76%) Finance
3 634 (10.38%) Public Sector
4 608 (9.96%) Analytical Skills
5 357 (5.85%) Banking
6 198 (3.24%) Documentation Skills
7 140 (2.29%) Legal
8 95 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 89 (1.46%) Retail
10 82 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
11 71 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
12 69 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
13 65 (1.06%) Financial Institution
14 63 (1.03%) Law
15 62 (1.02%) Marketing
16 61 (1.00%) Investment Banking
17 60 (0.98%) Front Office
18 54 (0.88%) Telecoms
19 44 (0.72%) Local Government
20 33 (0.54%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,006 (16.48%) Architect
2 778 (12.74%) Developer
3 737 (12.07%) Senior
4 575 (9.42%) Azure Engineer
5 529 (8.67%) Data Engineer
6 462 (7.57%) Lead
7 371 (6.08%) Analyst
8 318 (5.21%) DevOps Engineer
9 260 (4.26%) Solutions Architect
10 246 (4.03%) Consultant
11 195 (3.19%) Cloud Engineer
12 182 (2.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 154 (2.52%) Azure Architect
14 153 (2.51%) Platform Engineer
15 152 (2.49%) Security Engineer
16 138 (2.26%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 136 (2.23%) Data Architect
18 133 (2.18%) Technical Architect
19 132 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 132 (2.16%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 465 (7.62%) .NET
2 388 (6.36%) REST
3 261 (4.28%) React
4 245 (4.01%) Kafka
5 226 (3.70%) PySpark
6 208 (3.41%) Node.js
7 184 (3.01%) RESTful
8 182 (2.98%) OAuth
9 178 (2.92%) Spring
10 157 (2.57%) AngularJS
10 157 (2.57%) LDAP
11 143 (2.34%) Spring Boot
12 125 (2.05%) JSON
13 123 (2.01%) SAML
14 119 (1.95%) HTML
14 119 (1.95%) Middleware
15 118 (1.93%) SOAP
16 109 (1.79%) OpenID
17 101 (1.65%) PyTorch
18 100 (1.64%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 577 (9.45%) Cloud Native
2 243 (3.98%) Onboarding
3 209 (3.42%) Product Ownership
4 174 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 159 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
6 151 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
7 150 (2.46%) Security Posture
8 147 (2.41%) Distributed Systems
9 136 (2.23%) Data Centre
9 136 (2.23%) Public Cloud
10 109 (1.79%) AI Agents
11 84 (1.38%) Data Structures
12 83 (1.36%) Replication
13 69 (1.13%) Management Information System
14 64 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
15 59 (0.97%) PKI
16 57 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
17 51 (0.84%) Low-Code
18 50 (0.82%) Self-Motivation
19 44 (0.72%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 679 (11.12%) Windows
2 304 (4.98%) Linux
3 212 (3.47%) Windows Server
4 114 (1.87%) Windows 10
5 61 (1.00%) VMS
6 58 (0.95%) Unix
7 53 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 47 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 40 (0.66%) Apple iOS
10 33 (0.54%) Android
11 20 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.29%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 7 (0.11%) CentOS
18 6 (0.098%) CoreOS
19 5 (0.082%) AIX
19 5 (0.082%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,299 (37.66%) DevOps
2 1,874 (30.70%) CI/CD
3 1,424 (23.33%) Agile
4 954 (15.63%) Problem-Solving
5 938 (15.36%) Analytics
6 875 (14.33%) AI
7 850 (13.92%) Infrastructure as Code
8 825 (13.51%) Migration
9 708 (11.60%) Data Modelling
10 615 (10.07%) Business Intelligence
11 611 (10.01%) Stakeholder Management
12 603 (9.88%) Data Pipeline
13 594 (9.73%) Continuous Improvement
14 579 (9.48%) ETL
15 573 (9.39%) Containerisation
16 542 (8.88%) Data Engineering
17 537 (8.80%) Microservices
18 509 (8.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 495 (8.11%) Roadmaps
20 475 (7.78%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,540 (25.23%) Python
2 1,373 (22.49%) SQL
3 668 (10.94%) PowerShell
4 528 (8.65%) C#
5 520 (8.52%) Java
6 393 (6.44%) JavaScript
7 227 (3.72%) TypeScript
8 221 (3.62%) Bash
9 197 (3.23%) Bicep
10 96 (1.57%) Scala
11 78 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 77 (1.26%) Go
13 73 (1.20%) T-SQL
14 69 (1.13%) PL/SQL
15 62 (1.02%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.69%) R
17 36 (0.59%) Shell Script
18 21 (0.34%) C++
19 20 (0.33%) PHP
20 16 (0.26%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,543 (25.27%) Security Cleared
2 1,292 (21.16%) SC Cleared
3 446 (7.31%) Degree
4 354 (5.80%) Azure Certification
5 190 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
6 163 (2.67%) CISSP
7 146 (2.39%) Microsoft Certification
8 128 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
9 124 (2.03%) DV Cleared
10 119 (1.95%) AWS Certification
11 101 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
12 95 (1.56%) CISM
13 68 (1.11%) CCNP
14 60 (0.98%) PMP
15 57 (0.93%) Master's Degree
16 56 (0.92%) PMI Certification
17 55 (0.90%) TOGAF Certification
18 50 (0.82%) ISTQB
19 39 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (7.34%) Data Quality
2 346 (5.67%) GDPR
3 326 (5.34%) QA
4 247 (4.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 223 (3.65%) NIST
6 88 (1.44%) Accessibility
7 79 (1.29%) NCSC
7 79 (1.29%) PCI DSS
8 59 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 54 (0.88%) SLA
10 51 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
11 47 (0.77%) PMO
12 38 (0.62%) GRC
13 32 (0.52%) HIPAA
14 30 (0.49%) WCAG
15 23 (0.38%) 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
1 803 (13.15%) Active Directory
2 691 (11.32%) Docker
3 175 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 106 (1.74%) Virtual Machines
5 96 (1.57%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 58 (0.95%) vSphere
8 35 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 23 (0.38%) Firmware
9 23 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 17 (0.28%) NFS
11 11 (0.18%) Postfix
12 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 6 (0.098%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.098%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.098%) RACF
13 6 (0.098%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.098%) Varnish
14 5 (0.082%) KVM
14 5 (0.082%) Snort
Systems Management
1 972 (15.92%) Terraform
2 909 (14.89%) Kubernetes
3 333 (5.45%) Microsoft Intune
4 265 (4.34%) Ansible
5 165 (2.70%) Grafana
6 138 (2.26%) Single Sign-On
7 137 (2.24%) Prometheus
8 105 (1.72%) SCCM
9 68 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (0.59%) Istio
11 35 (0.57%) Argo
12 32 (0.52%) Puppet
13 27 (0.44%) Progress Chef
14 23 (0.38%) vCenter Server
15 22 (0.36%) FortiGate
15 22 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
16 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
17 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.25%) linkerd
19 14 (0.23%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,013 (32.97%) Microsoft
2 623 (10.20%) Databricks
3 291 (4.77%) Oracle
4 277 (4.54%) Google
5 271 (4.44%) ServiceNow
6 247 (4.05%) VMware
7 177 (2.90%) SAP
8 161 (2.64%) OpenAI
9 158 (2.59%) Cisco
10 134 (2.19%) Splunk
11 130 (2.13%) CyberArk
12 106 (1.74%) Foundry
13 85 (1.39%) Salesforce
14 82 (1.34%) Okta
15 79 (1.29%) Palo Alto
16 67 (1.10%) BeyondTrust
17 65 (1.06%) Citrix
18 61 (1.00%) IBM
19 60 (0.98%) Informatica
20 58 (0.95%) Red Hat