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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,435 3,705 4,991
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.40% 15.44% 13.59%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.87% 40.98% 42.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,579 2,592 3,683
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -1.79%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £538
% change year-on-year +0.38% -2.70% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 144 25 46
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.98 £17.80
25th Percentile £50.14 £26.75 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.75% +14.29% -44.44%
75th Percentile £70.21 £76.25 £61.19
90th Percentile £99.84 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
% change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -44.44%

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 14,667 9,041 11,758
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.11% 37.69% 32.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,973 6,174 8,462
10th Percentile £325 £311 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.39% -1.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £714 £738 £748
UK median daily rate £510 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 507 218 323
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.17 £17.88 £16.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.26 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +56.40% +18.18% -38.94%
75th Percentile £68.63 £37.69 £39.50
90th Percentile £81.65 £68.75 £69.90
UK median hourly rate £35.81 £28.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +27.89% +30.23% -42.67%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 3,422 £540 -1.82% 1,271
North of England +5 928 £500 +5.26% 641
South East +3 824 £500 - 709
Midlands 0 522 £500 +1.63% 371
North West +4 469 £500 +5.26% 359
South West +6 394 £525 - 334
Yorkshire +7 384 £500 +5.26% 172
West Midlands +1 382 £500 -4.76% 236
East of England +3 154 £550 -5.17% 204
East Midlands +4 130 £464 +0.27% 135
North East +5 87 £525 +5.00% 110
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
1 317 (4.93%) SharePoint
2 176 (2.74%) Confluence
3 174 (2.70%) Apache Spark
4 171 (2.66%) Microsoft Exchange
5 102 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
6 97 (1.51%) Apache
7 30 (0.47%) SAS
8 23 (0.36%) IIS
9 18 (0.28%) CMS
10 15 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.19%) Appian
12 11 (0.17%) Camunda
12 11 (0.17%) Mendix
12 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 10 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 9 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 6 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 86 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 6 (0.093%) CPLEX
10 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.078%) PTC Creo
10 5 (0.078%) Revit
11 4 (0.062%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.062%) Notion
11 4 (0.062%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.016%) InDesign
13 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.016%) Sketch
13 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 91 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 18 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.093%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.093%) Shopify
7 6 (0.093%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.078%) NEC Housing
8 5 (0.078%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.078%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.078%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.062%) Endur
9 4 (0.062%) Magento
9 4 (0.062%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.062%) Ripple
9 4 (0.062%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,222 (34.53%) AWS
2 1,297 (20.16%) Azure DevOps
3 1,107 (17.20%) GCP
4 813 (12.63%) Entra ID
4 813 (12.63%) Power Platform
5 685 (10.64%) Microsoft 365
6 579 (9.00%) GitHub
7 446 (6.93%) Azure Data Factory
8 337 (5.24%) GitHub Actions
9 311 (4.83%) Serverless
10 286 (4.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 263 (4.09%) SaaS
12 233 (3.62%) Azure AKS
13 219 (3.40%) PaaS
14 216 (3.36%) Dynamics 365
15 213 (3.31%) Power Automate
16 198 (3.08%) Azure Monitor
17 178 (2.77%) IaaS
17 178 (2.77%) Snowflake
18 172 (2.67%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 395 (6.14%) Firewall
2 293 (4.55%) DNS
3 238 (3.70%) VPN
4 217 (3.37%) Network Security
5 180 (2.80%) WAN
6 159 (2.47%) DHCP
7 116 (1.80%) LAN
8 92 (1.43%) SD-WAN
8 92 (1.43%) TCP/IP
9 79 (1.23%) BGP
10 71 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
11 69 (1.07%) VLAN
12 67 (1.04%) OSPF
13 61 (0.95%) Kerberos
14 49 (0.76%) SAN
15 43 (0.67%) VXLAN
16 39 (0.61%) SSL
16 39 (0.61%) Wireless
17 32 (0.50%) IPsec
18 30 (0.47%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 555 (8.62%) Power BI
2 389 (6.05%) SQL Server
3 327 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
4 315 (4.90%) Data Lake
5 217 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
6 190 (2.95%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.64%) NoSQL
8 140 (2.18%) Metadata
9 136 (2.11%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.51%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.43%) Big Data
12 86 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.17%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.13%) Tableau
15 62 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
16 60 (0.93%) Oracle Database
17 55 (0.85%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.71%) Spark SQL
19 44 (0.68%) MySQL
19 44 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 453 (7.04%) Git
2 437 (6.79%) JIRA
3 295 (4.58%) Jenkins
4 246 (3.82%) GitLab
5 100 (1.55%) Selenium
6 60 (0.93%) Postman
7 53 (0.82%) JMeter
8 52 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 49 (0.76%) JUnit
10 42 (0.65%) MLflow
10 42 (0.65%) REST Assured
11 40 (0.62%) SonarQube
12 30 (0.47%) Artifactory
12 30 (0.47%) Cypress.io
12 30 (0.47%) WebDriver
13 27 (0.42%) Maven
13 27 (0.42%) Visual Studio
14 25 (0.39%) Gatling
15 24 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
16 22 (0.34%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,635 (25.41%) Social Skills
2 1,244 (19.33%) Finance
3 642 (9.98%) Public Sector
4 591 (9.18%) Analytical Skills
5 364 (5.66%) Banking
6 188 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
7 149 (2.32%) Legal
8 115 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 115 (1.79%) Retail
9 88 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
10 69 (1.07%) Investment Banking
11 65 (1.01%) Financial Institution
12 64 (0.99%) Front Office
13 62 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
14 61 (0.95%) Law
15 57 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
16 55 (0.85%) Marketing
17 44 (0.68%) Telecoms
18 38 (0.59%) Local Government
18 38 (0.59%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,115 (17.33%) Architect
2 784 (12.18%) Senior
3 749 (11.64%) Developer
4 575 (8.94%) Azure Engineer
5 520 (8.08%) Data Engineer
6 492 (7.65%) Lead
7 395 (6.14%) Analyst
8 322 (5.00%) DevOps Engineer
9 312 (4.85%) Solutions Architect
10 261 (4.06%) Consultant
11 233 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
12 227 (3.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 178 (2.77%) Security Engineer
14 173 (2.69%) Azure Architect
15 170 (2.64%) Data Architect
16 154 (2.39%) Platform Engineer
17 144 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 144 (2.24%) Technical Architect
18 141 (2.19%) Business Analyst
19 140 (2.18%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 491 (7.63%) .NET
2 426 (6.62%) REST
3 260 (4.04%) React
4 234 (3.64%) Kafka
5 221 (3.43%) PySpark
6 191 (2.97%) RESTful
7 184 (2.86%) OAuth
8 178 (2.77%) Node.js
9 166 (2.58%) LDAP
10 163 (2.53%) Spring
11 159 (2.47%) AngularJS
12 133 (2.07%) Spring Boot
13 129 (2.00%) JSON
14 122 (1.90%) SAML
15 121 (1.88%) SOAP
16 119 (1.85%) Middleware
17 118 (1.83%) OpenID
18 112 (1.74%) HTML
19 101 (1.57%) YAML
20 96 (1.49%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 651 (10.12%) Cloud Native
2 268 (4.16%) Onboarding
3 229 (3.56%) Product Ownership
4 198 (3.08%) Data Centre
5 197 (3.06%) Hybrid Cloud
6 168 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
7 159 (2.47%) Distributed Systems
8 157 (2.44%) Security Posture
9 149 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
10 137 (2.13%) Public Cloud
11 125 (1.94%) AI Agents
12 88 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 84 (1.31%) Replication
14 79 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 73 (1.13%) Management Information System
16 63 (0.98%) PKI
17 62 (0.96%) Enterprise Cloud
18 59 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
19 57 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
20 56 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 754 (11.72%) Windows
2 323 (5.02%) Linux
3 227 (3.53%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.79%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.03%) Mac OS
6 63 (0.98%) Unix
7 62 (0.96%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 54 (0.84%) VMS
10 49 (0.76%) Android
11 27 (0.42%) Ubuntu
12 26 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
14 15 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
15 12 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
16 11 (0.17%) CentOS
17 10 (0.16%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
19 6 (0.093%) CoreOS
19 6 (0.093%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,378 (36.95%) DevOps
2 1,974 (30.68%) CI/CD
3 1,470 (22.84%) Agile
4 940 (14.61%) Analytics
5 937 (14.56%) Infrastructure as Code
6 936 (14.55%) AI
7 917 (14.25%) Problem-Solving
8 912 (14.17%) Migration
9 724 (11.25%) Data Modelling
10 690 (10.72%) Stakeholder Management
11 637 (9.90%) Data Pipeline
12 626 (9.73%) Continuous Improvement
13 607 (9.43%) ETL
14 606 (9.42%) Business Intelligence
15 598 (9.29%) Roadmaps
16 557 (8.66%) Containerisation
17 546 (8.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 540 (8.39%) Microservices
19 537 (8.34%) Data Engineering
20 478 (7.43%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,504 (23.37%) Python
2 1,365 (21.21%) SQL
3 680 (10.57%) PowerShell
4 533 (8.28%) Java
5 515 (8.00%) C#
6 356 (5.53%) JavaScript
7 224 (3.48%) TypeScript
8 219 (3.40%) Bash
9 205 (3.19%) Bicep
10 82 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.24%) Scala
12 78 (1.21%) T-SQL
13 69 (1.07%) Go
14 43 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 37 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.53%) PL/SQL
17 32 (0.50%) R
18 24 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 22 (0.34%) C++
20 14 (0.22%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,602 (24.90%) Security Cleared
2 1,343 (20.87%) SC Cleared
3 463 (7.20%) Degree
4 357 (5.55%) Azure Certification
5 201 (3.12%) CISSP
6 176 (2.74%) Computer Science Degree
7 157 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
8 155 (2.41%) DV Cleared
9 143 (2.22%) Microsoft Certification
10 130 (2.02%) AWS Certification
11 119 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
12 108 (1.68%) CISM
13 74 (1.15%) CCNP
14 70 (1.09%) PMP
15 63 (0.98%) PMI Certification
16 60 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 49 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.73%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
20 39 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 453 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 336 (5.22%) QA
3 307 (4.77%) GDPR
4 247 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 231 (3.59%) NIST
6 112 (1.74%) Accessibility
7 85 (1.32%) SLA
8 82 (1.27%) NCSC
9 74 (1.15%) PCI DSS
10 67 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
11 60 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 45 (0.70%) WCAG
13 44 (0.68%) GRC
14 43 (0.67%) PMO
15 34 (0.53%) HIPAA
16 26 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.25%) ISO 20022
19 15 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 832 (12.93%) Active Directory
2 666 (10.35%) Docker
3 193 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 112 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
5 104 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
6 94 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.96%) vSphere
8 49 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.42%) Firmware
9 27 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.30%) NFS
11 17 (0.26%) Postfix
12 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.12%) Varnish
14 7 (0.11%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.093%) KVM
15 6 (0.093%) RACF
16 5 (0.078%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.078%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,005 (15.62%) Terraform
2 897 (13.94%) Kubernetes
3 355 (5.52%) Microsoft Intune
4 292 (4.54%) Ansible
5 178 (2.77%) Grafana
6 153 (2.38%) Prometheus
7 144 (2.24%) Single Sign-On
8 93 (1.45%) SCCM
9 72 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (0.56%) Progress Chef
11 34 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
11 34 (0.53%) Puppet
12 33 (0.51%) Argo
13 31 (0.48%) Istio
14 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
15 23 (0.36%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.30%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.25%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.23%) Packer
19 14 (0.22%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,094 (32.54%) Microsoft
2 632 (9.82%) Databricks
3 289 (4.49%) ServiceNow
4 264 (4.10%) VMware
5 250 (3.89%) Oracle
6 236 (3.67%) Google
7 188 (2.92%) SAP
8 175 (2.72%) Cisco
9 156 (2.42%) OpenAI
10 138 (2.14%) Splunk
11 135 (2.10%) CyberArk
12 123 (1.91%) Palo Alto
13 103 (1.60%) Foundry
14 100 (1.55%) Salesforce
15 88 (1.37%) Okta
16 72 (1.12%) Dynatrace
17 66 (1.03%) Citrix
18 63 (0.98%) BeyondTrust
19 61 (0.95%) Red Hat
20 60 (0.93%) Zscaler