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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,580 3,771 5,127
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.31% 15.20% 13.60%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.73% 40.33% 42.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,660 2,641 3,765
10th Percentile £363 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year - -3.23% -3.13%
75th Percentile £630 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £746
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £535
% change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 151 27 48
10th Percentile £25.38 £25.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £42.53 £28.20 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +45.58% -41.67%
75th Percentile £78.00 £77.35 £60.36
90th Percentile £100.85 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £58.61 £36.75
% change year-on-year -1.89% +59.48% -39.46%

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 15,046 9,350 12,065
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.00% 37.69% 32.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,190 6,358 8,621
10th Percentile £325 £312 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +1.99% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 531 234 338
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.08 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.50% +16.65% -36.10%
75th Percentile £69.60 £38.50 £43.44
90th Percentile £82.37 £70.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.06 £28.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +32.36% +27.27% -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 18 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 18 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 18 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 3,494 £540 -1.82% 1,118
North of England +7 939 £500 +5.26% 525
South East +3 836 £508 +1.50% 641
Midlands +2 542 £500 - 288
North West +6 480 £500 +0.81% 314
South West +6 422 £525 +1.69% 286
West Midlands +1 403 £500 -4.76% 168
Yorkshire +8 378 £500 +5.26% 129
East of England +8 166 £550 -5.17% 188
East Midlands +6 129 £494 +6.76% 119
North East +4 93 £525 +5.00% 84
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
1 323 (4.91%) SharePoint
2 195 (2.96%) Confluence
3 168 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 164 (2.49%) Apache Spark
5 108 (1.64%) Apache Airflow
6 97 (1.47%) Apache
7 35 (0.53%) SAS
8 25 (0.38%) IIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Appian
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
12 10 (0.15%) Mendix
13 9 (0.14%) HCL Notes
14 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.091%) Tomcat
Applications
1 92 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 26 (0.40%) Chatbot
5 26 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
8 8 (0.12%) 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 (0.030%) 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 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.35%) 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
8 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.091%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.091%) SimCorp Dimension
9 6 (0.091%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.076%) Endur
10 5 (0.076%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.076%) SAP MM
11 4 (0.061%) Magento
11 4 (0.061%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.061%) Oracle FAH
11 4 (0.061%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,275 (34.57%) AWS
2 1,339 (20.35%) Azure DevOps
3 1,086 (16.50%) GCP
4 853 (12.96%) Power Platform
5 845 (12.84%) Entra ID
6 685 (10.41%) Microsoft 365
7 580 (8.81%) GitHub
8 432 (6.57%) Azure Data Factory
9 343 (5.21%) GitHub Actions
10 325 (4.94%) Serverless
11 278 (4.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 263 (4.00%) SaaS
13 241 (3.66%) Azure AKS
14 222 (3.37%) Power Automate
15 218 (3.31%) Dynamics 365
16 213 (3.24%) PaaS
17 209 (3.18%) Azure Monitor
18 190 (2.89%) Snowflake
19 184 (2.80%) PowerApps
20 179 (2.72%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 395 (6.00%) Firewall
2 297 (4.51%) DNS
3 231 (3.51%) VPN
4 217 (3.30%) Network Security
5 186 (2.83%) WAN
6 161 (2.45%) DHCP
7 112 (1.70%) LAN
8 94 (1.43%) SD-WAN
9 93 (1.41%) TCP/IP
10 86 (1.31%) BGP
11 73 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
12 68 (1.03%) OSPF
12 68 (1.03%) VLAN
13 58 (0.88%) Kerberos
14 52 (0.79%) SAN
15 46 (0.70%) SSL
16 43 (0.65%) Wireless
17 42 (0.64%) VXLAN
18 34 (0.52%) Internet
19 32 (0.49%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 593 (9.01%) Power BI
2 392 (5.96%) SQL Server
3 335 (5.09%) Data Warehouse
4 317 (4.82%) Data Lake
5 225 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
6 184 (2.80%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 153 (2.33%) Metadata
9 133 (2.02%) Delta Lake
10 106 (1.61%) Relational Database
11 87 (1.32%) Big Data
12 85 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.14%) Tableau
14 74 (1.12%) MongoDB
15 63 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
16 56 (0.85%) Oracle Database
17 54 (0.82%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.71%) Spark SQL
19 46 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
20 45 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 468 (7.11%) Git
2 460 (6.99%) JIRA
3 290 (4.41%) Jenkins
4 240 (3.65%) GitLab
5 97 (1.47%) Selenium
6 57 (0.87%) JMeter
7 55 (0.84%) Postman
8 51 (0.78%) JUnit
9 49 (0.74%) Cucumber
10 41 (0.62%) MLflow
10 41 (0.62%) REST Assured
11 40 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 33 (0.50%) WebDriver
13 32 (0.49%) Visual Studio
14 29 (0.44%) Cypress.io
15 28 (0.43%) Maven
16 27 (0.41%) Gatling
17 23 (0.35%) Artifactory
17 23 (0.35%) Gradle
17 23 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,662 (25.26%) Social Skills
2 1,303 (19.80%) Finance
3 667 (10.14%) Public Sector
4 607 (9.22%) Analytical Skills
5 378 (5.74%) Banking
6 194 (2.95%) Documentation Skills
7 150 (2.28%) Legal
8 143 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 128 (1.95%) Retail
10 85 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
11 67 (1.02%) Investment Banking
12 66 (1.00%) Financial Institution
12 66 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
13 64 (0.97%) Law
14 63 (0.96%) Front Office
15 56 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
16 55 (0.84%) Marketing
17 52 (0.79%) Telecoms
18 42 (0.64%) Manufacturing
19 41 (0.62%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,145 (17.40%) Architect
2 822 (12.49%) Senior
3 783 (11.90%) Developer
4 591 (8.98%) Azure Engineer
5 525 (7.98%) Data Engineer
6 498 (7.57%) Lead
7 403 (6.12%) Analyst
8 336 (5.11%) Solutions Architect
9 331 (5.03%) DevOps Engineer
10 277 (4.21%) Consultant
11 260 (3.95%) Cloud Engineer
12 238 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 182 (2.77%) Data Architect
14 179 (2.72%) Azure Architect
15 173 (2.63%) Security Engineer
16 172 (2.61%) Platform Engineer
17 152 (2.31%) Business Analyst
18 148 (2.25%) Technical Architect
19 147 (2.23%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 145 (2.20%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 490 (7.45%) .NET
2 441 (6.70%) REST
3 264 (4.01%) React
4 243 (3.69%) Kafka
5 223 (3.39%) PySpark
6 205 (3.12%) RESTful
7 196 (2.98%) OAuth
8 172 (2.61%) Node.js
9 168 (2.55%) Spring
10 155 (2.36%) AngularJS
11 149 (2.26%) LDAP
12 138 (2.10%) Spring Boot
13 134 (2.04%) JSON
14 133 (2.02%) SAML
15 121 (1.84%) OpenID
16 118 (1.79%) SOAP
17 116 (1.76%) Middleware
18 114 (1.73%) HTML
19 105 (1.60%) .NET Framework
20 98 (1.49%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 692 (10.52%) Cloud Native
2 283 (4.30%) Onboarding
3 248 (3.77%) Product Ownership
4 206 (3.13%) Data Centre
5 193 (2.93%) Hybrid Cloud
6 187 (2.84%) Distributed Systems
7 173 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
8 151 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
8 151 (2.29%) Security Posture
9 144 (2.19%) AI Agents
10 139 (2.11%) Public Cloud
11 100 (1.52%) Data Structures
12 85 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
13 83 (1.26%) Replication
14 82 (1.25%) Management Information System
15 67 (1.02%) PKI
16 66 (1.00%) Enterprise Cloud
16 66 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
17 58 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
17 58 (0.88%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 781 (11.87%) Windows
2 323 (4.91%) Linux
3 243 (3.69%) Windows Server
4 104 (1.58%) Windows 10
5 69 (1.05%) Unix
6 66 (1.00%) Apple iOS
7 60 (0.91%) Mac OS
8 56 (0.85%) Android
8 56 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 52 (0.79%) VMS
10 29 (0.44%) Ubuntu
11 26 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
13 15 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.17%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.091%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.091%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,416 (36.72%) DevOps
2 2,015 (30.62%) CI/CD
3 1,540 (23.40%) Agile
4 1,016 (15.44%) AI
5 970 (14.74%) Analytics
5 970 (14.74%) Infrastructure as Code
6 940 (14.29%) Migration
7 915 (13.91%) Problem-Solving
8 748 (11.37%) Stakeholder Management
9 741 (11.26%) Data Modelling
10 648 (9.85%) Data Pipeline
11 644 (9.79%) Continuous Improvement
12 642 (9.76%) Business Intelligence
13 632 (9.60%) Roadmaps
14 615 (9.35%) ETL
15 585 (8.89%) Containerisation
16 563 (8.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 561 (8.53%) Microservices
18 548 (8.33%) Data Engineering
19 495 (7.52%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,555 (23.63%) Python
2 1,380 (20.97%) SQL
3 680 (10.33%) PowerShell
4 542 (8.24%) Java
5 522 (7.93%) C#
6 364 (5.53%) JavaScript
7 237 (3.60%) TypeScript
8 217 (3.30%) Bicep
9 216 (3.28%) Bash
10 87 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.20%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.09%) Scala
13 69 (1.05%) Go
14 42 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
15 35 (0.53%) R
16 32 (0.49%) Shell Script
17 30 (0.46%) PL/SQL
18 27 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 21 (0.32%) C++
20 15 (0.23%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,631 (24.79%) Security Cleared
2 1,364 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 467 (7.10%) Degree
4 365 (5.55%) Azure Certification
5 211 (3.21%) CISSP
6 169 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 165 (2.51%) DV Cleared
8 164 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 155 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
10 153 (2.33%) AWS Certification
11 119 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
12 110 (1.67%) CISM
13 72 (1.09%) PMP
14 70 (1.06%) CCNP
15 66 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 60 (0.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 49 (0.74%) ISTQB
18 44 (0.67%) Master's Degree
18 44 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
19 40 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 470 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 329 (5.00%) QA
3 306 (4.65%) GDPR
4 251 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 236 (3.59%) NIST
6 127 (1.93%) Accessibility
7 91 (1.38%) NCSC
8 84 (1.28%) SLA
9 74 (1.12%) PCI DSS
10 69 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
11 67 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 53 (0.81%) WCAG
13 52 (0.79%) GRC
14 38 (0.58%) PMO
15 35 (0.53%) HIPAA
16 29 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
18 22 (0.33%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.24%) COBIT
20 15 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 843 (12.81%) Active Directory
2 678 (10.30%) Docker
3 192 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 126 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 113 (1.72%) Virtual Machines
6 92 (1.40%) Hyper-V
7 64 (0.97%) vSphere
8 53 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.43%) 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 (0.091%) KVM
16 6 (0.091%) RACF
17 5 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.061%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 1,042 (15.84%) Terraform
2 904 (13.74%) Kubernetes
3 368 (5.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 296 (4.50%) Ansible
5 170 (2.58%) Grafana
6 147 (2.23%) Prometheus
7 143 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
8 93 (1.41%) SCCM
9 72 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.58%) Progress Chef
11 36 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.53%) Puppet
13 33 (0.50%) FortiGate
14 31 (0.47%) Argo
15 29 (0.44%) Istio
16 23 (0.35%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.24%) Packer
19 14 (0.21%) HP ALM
20 12 (0.18%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,135 (32.45%) Microsoft
2 634 (9.64%) Databricks
3 307 (4.67%) ServiceNow
4 261 (3.97%) VMware
5 252 (3.83%) Oracle
6 230 (3.50%) Google
7 191 (2.90%) SAP
8 175 (2.66%) Cisco
9 171 (2.60%) OpenAI
10 130 (1.98%) CyberArk
11 128 (1.95%) Splunk
12 121 (1.84%) Palo Alto
13 114 (1.73%) Salesforce
14 111 (1.69%) Foundry
15 86 (1.31%) Okta
16 80 (1.22%) Dynatrace
17 67 (1.02%) Zscaler
18 66 (1.00%) Informatica
19 59 (0.90%) Citrix
20 56 (0.85%) Red Hat