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

6 months to
19 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,995 4,101 5,170
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.53% 14.96% 14.34%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.41% 39.99% 43.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,917 2,853 3,791
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £630 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 32 42
10th Percentile £19.50 £25.10 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £27.24 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +17.62% -38.75%
75th Percentile £79.75 £76.56 £59.95
90th Percentile £100.76 £100.00 £69.29
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £42.34
% change year-on-year +16.75% +16.32% -29.32%

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 15,751 10,256 11,964
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.96% 37.42% 33.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,555 6,937 8,512
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £421 £409 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.95% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £519 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.50% -4.57% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 556 268 300
10th Percentile £16.70 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.35 £18.04 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.02 £25.15 £21.75
Median % change year-on-year +55.15% +15.63% -37.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.39 £44.36
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.81 £27.63 £22.00
% change year-on-year +29.61% +25.59% -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 19 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 19 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 19 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 3,648 £550 - 947
North of England +7 1,016 £500 +1.52% 474
South East +2 883 £525 +5.00% 595
Midlands +3 628 £498 +0.51% 254
North West +8 532 £500 - 236
West Midlands +2 472 £496 -5.48% 159
South West +6 452 £540 +7.90% 205
Yorkshire +3 405 £500 +5.26% 164
East of England +4 188 £550 -2.22% 154
East Midlands +4 145 £488 +5.41% 95
North East +5 92 £525 +5.00% 82
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
1 355 (5.08%) SharePoint
2 231 (3.30%) Confluence
3 174 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 165 (2.36%) Apache Spark
5 116 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.53%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 17 (0.24%) CMS
10 15 (0.21%) OpenStack
11 13 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.14%) Camunda
13 9 (0.13%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.086%) Appian
15 6 (0.086%) Documentum
16 5 (0.071%) Mendix
16 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 109 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 66 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
4 32 (0.46%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 27 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.13%) Trello
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
11 4 (0.057%) Notion
12 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.029%) Houdini
13 2 (0.029%) NUKE
13 2 (0.029%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.014%) InDesign
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 103 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 70 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Maximo
6 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.10%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 6 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.086%) Shopify
7 6 (0.086%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.071%) Endur
8 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.071%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.071%) SimCorp Dimension
8 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.057%) Quorum
9 4 (0.057%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,473 (35.35%) AWS
2 1,439 (20.57%) Azure DevOps
3 1,176 (16.81%) GCP
4 912 (13.04%) Entra ID
5 881 (12.59%) Power Platform
6 701 (10.02%) Microsoft 365
7 647 (9.25%) GitHub
8 422 (6.03%) Azure Data Factory
9 385 (5.50%) GitHub Actions
10 308 (4.40%) Serverless
11 293 (4.19%) SaaS
12 286 (4.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 246 (3.52%) Azure AKS
14 239 (3.42%) Azure Monitor
15 238 (3.40%) Power Automate
16 226 (3.23%) Dynamics 365
16 226 (3.23%) PaaS
17 208 (2.97%) PowerApps
18 203 (2.90%) Snowflake
19 192 (2.74%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 458 (6.55%) Firewall
2 337 (4.82%) DNS
3 275 (3.93%) VPN
4 238 (3.40%) Network Security
5 184 (2.63%) WAN
6 175 (2.50%) DHCP
7 142 (2.03%) TCP/IP
8 119 (1.70%) LAN
9 110 (1.57%) BGP
10 91 (1.30%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.26%) OSPF
12 81 (1.16%) VLAN
13 70 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.81%) SSL
15 56 (0.80%) SAN
16 49 (0.70%) Wireless
17 47 (0.67%) Kerberos
18 46 (0.66%) IPsec
19 41 (0.59%) VXLAN
20 38 (0.54%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 618 (8.83%) Power BI
2 414 (5.92%) SQL Server
3 354 (5.06%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.32%) Data Lake
5 254 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
6 177 (2.53%) NoSQL
7 174 (2.49%) Azure SQL Database
8 166 (2.37%) Metadata
9 120 (1.72%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.67%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.33%) Big Data
12 84 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 72 (1.03%) MongoDB
14 69 (0.99%) Tableau
15 62 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
16 58 (0.83%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.77%) MySQL
18 53 (0.76%) Oracle Database
19 47 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
19 47 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 526 (7.52%) JIRA
2 518 (7.41%) Git
3 329 (4.70%) Jenkins
4 247 (3.53%) GitLab
5 106 (1.52%) Selenium
6 58 (0.83%) JUnit
7 55 (0.79%) Postman
8 53 (0.76%) JMeter
9 48 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 42 (0.60%) Cypress.io
10 42 (0.60%) SonarQube
11 39 (0.56%) WebDriver
12 38 (0.54%) REST Assured
13 37 (0.53%) Visual Studio
14 36 (0.51%) MLflow
15 35 (0.50%) Maven
16 28 (0.40%) Gradle
17 27 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
18 24 (0.34%) Bitbucket
19 23 (0.33%) Gatling
General
1 1,767 (25.26%) Social Skills
2 1,370 (19.59%) Finance
3 753 (10.76%) Public Sector
4 692 (9.89%) Analytical Skills
5 395 (5.65%) Banking
6 203 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
7 167 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 165 (2.36%) Retail
9 156 (2.23%) Legal
10 92 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 76 (1.09%) Telecoms
13 68 (0.97%) Law
14 64 (0.91%) Front Office
14 64 (0.91%) Investment Banking
14 64 (0.91%) Marketing
15 62 (0.89%) Financial Institution
16 61 (0.87%) Manufacturing
17 55 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
18 50 (0.71%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,238 (17.70%) Architect
2 868 (12.41%) Senior
3 846 (12.09%) Developer
4 610 (8.72%) Azure Engineer
5 561 (8.02%) Lead
6 529 (7.56%) Data Engineer
7 436 (6.23%) Analyst
8 374 (5.35%) Solutions Architect
9 336 (4.80%) DevOps Engineer
10 286 (4.09%) Cloud Engineer
11 280 (4.00%) Consultant
12 260 (3.72%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 203 (2.90%) Data Architect
14 177 (2.53%) Azure Architect
14 177 (2.53%) Platform Engineer
15 171 (2.44%) Security Engineer
16 166 (2.37%) Project Manager
17 165 (2.36%) Business Analyst
18 162 (2.32%) Technical Architect
19 154 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 524 (7.49%) .NET
2 475 (6.79%) REST
3 273 (3.90%) Kafka
3 273 (3.90%) React
4 225 (3.22%) RESTful
5 216 (3.09%) PySpark
6 209 (2.99%) OAuth
7 174 (2.49%) Spring
8 164 (2.34%) Node.js
9 157 (2.24%) JSON
10 156 (2.23%) AngularJS
11 142 (2.03%) Spring Boot
12 133 (1.90%) SAML
13 128 (1.83%) OpenID
14 124 (1.77%) HTML
15 122 (1.74%) LDAP
16 119 (1.70%) .NET Framework
17 116 (1.66%) OAuth2
18 114 (1.63%) Middleware
19 111 (1.59%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 740 (10.58%) Cloud Native
2 318 (4.55%) Onboarding
3 284 (4.06%) Product Ownership
4 228 (3.26%) Data Centre
5 227 (3.25%) Distributed Systems
6 218 (3.12%) Hybrid Cloud
7 205 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
8 182 (2.60%) AI Agents
9 152 (2.17%) Security Posture
10 145 (2.07%) Enterprise Software
11 126 (1.80%) Public Cloud
12 112 (1.60%) Data Structures
13 103 (1.47%) Management Information System
14 93 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
15 89 (1.27%) Replication
16 83 (1.19%) PKI
17 81 (1.16%) Enterprise Cloud
18 75 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
19 70 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
20 61 (0.87%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 826 (11.81%) Windows
2 378 (5.40%) Linux
3 259 (3.70%) Windows Server
4 108 (1.54%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.04%) Unix
6 70 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 63 (0.90%) Android
7 63 (0.90%) Mac OS
8 61 (0.87%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.66%) VMS
10 40 (0.57%) Ubuntu
11 22 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.16%) CentOS
15 9 (0.13%) Debian
16 6 (0.086%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.086%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.071%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,557 (36.55%) DevOps
2 2,142 (30.62%) CI/CD
3 1,739 (24.86%) Agile
4 1,113 (15.91%) AI
5 1,050 (15.01%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,021 (14.60%) Migration
7 1,006 (14.38%) Analytics
8 940 (13.44%) Problem-Solving
9 927 (13.25%) Stakeholder Management
10 788 (11.27%) Data Modelling
11 742 (10.61%) Continuous Improvement
12 681 (9.74%) Data Pipeline
13 677 (9.68%) Roadmaps
14 667 (9.54%) Business Intelligence
15 626 (8.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 622 (8.89%) Containerisation
17 613 (8.76%) Microservices
18 603 (8.62%) ETL
19 580 (8.29%) Data Engineering
20 540 (7.72%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,628 (23.27%) Python
2 1,405 (20.09%) SQL
3 726 (10.38%) PowerShell
4 575 (8.22%) Java
5 529 (7.56%) C#
6 380 (5.43%) JavaScript
7 287 (4.10%) Bash
8 250 (3.57%) TypeScript
9 244 (3.49%) Bicep
10 89 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 74 (1.06%) Go
13 61 (0.87%) Scala
14 49 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
15 39 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 34 (0.49%) R
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 25 (0.36%) Groovy
19 22 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,751 (25.03%) Security Cleared
2 1,422 (20.33%) SC Cleared
3 514 (7.35%) Degree
4 379 (5.42%) Azure Certification
5 228 (3.26%) DV Cleared
6 219 (3.13%) CISSP
7 190 (2.72%) Microsoft Certification
8 179 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
9 175 (2.50%) AWS Certification
10 170 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
11 151 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
12 104 (1.49%) CISM
13 85 (1.22%) CCNP
14 73 (1.04%) PMP
15 70 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 55 (0.79%) Master's Degree
18 53 (0.76%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 44 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 483 (6.90%) Data Quality
2 368 (5.26%) QA
3 291 (4.16%) GDPR
4 248 (3.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 245 (3.50%) NIST
6 162 (2.32%) Accessibility
7 94 (1.34%) NCSC
8 90 (1.29%) SLA
9 67 (0.96%) PCI DSS
10 66 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
11 65 (0.93%) WCAG
12 62 (0.89%) GRC
13 55 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 45 (0.64%) PMO
15 33 (0.47%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.33%) NIST 800
18 22 (0.31%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.23%) COBIT
20 15 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 881 (12.59%) Active Directory
2 734 (10.49%) Docker
3 192 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 135 (1.93%) Virtual Desktop
5 129 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
6 91 (1.30%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.89%) vSphere
8 51 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.43%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 16 (0.23%) Postfix
13 12 (0.17%) IAG
14 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.10%) Varnish
16 6 (0.086%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.071%) RACF
17 5 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.057%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,127 (16.11%) Terraform
2 991 (14.17%) Kubernetes
3 382 (5.46%) Microsoft Intune
4 347 (4.96%) Ansible
5 207 (2.96%) Grafana
6 174 (2.49%) Prometheus
7 142 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
8 100 (1.43%) SCCM
9 57 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 47 (0.67%) Progress Chef
11 43 (0.61%) Jamf Pro
12 42 (0.60%) Argo
13 41 (0.59%) Puppet
14 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 26 (0.37%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 18 (0.26%) HAProxy
17 18 (0.26%) Packer
18 16 (0.23%) HP ALM
19 15 (0.21%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,302 (32.91%) Microsoft
2 625 (8.93%) Databricks
3 352 (5.03%) ServiceNow
4 272 (3.89%) Oracle
4 272 (3.89%) VMware
5 262 (3.75%) Google
6 199 (2.84%) SAP
7 198 (2.83%) Cisco
8 171 (2.44%) OpenAI
9 153 (2.19%) Splunk
10 134 (1.92%) Salesforce
11 132 (1.89%) Palo Alto
12 131 (1.87%) CyberArk
13 121 (1.73%) Foundry
14 89 (1.27%) Dynatrace
15 85 (1.22%) Zscaler
16 79 (1.13%) Okta
17 65 (0.93%) Citrix
17 65 (0.93%) Fortinet
17 65 (0.93%) Informatica