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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,968 4,074 5,096
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.54% 14.95% 14.40%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.49% 39.99% 43.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,884 2,832 3,744
10th Percentile £374 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £634 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £525
% change year-on-year +0.38% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 31 40
10th Percentile £19.50 £26.00 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £28.70 £23.43
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -41.57%
75th Percentile £80.00 £76.88 £60.36
90th Percentile £100.85 £100.00 £70.22
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -41.47%

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 15,661 10,188 11,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.93% 37.38% 33.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,470 6,885 8,378
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £420 £409 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.34% -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 +3.70% -4.67% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 554 268 287
10th Percentile £16.70 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.04 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.27 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.14% +14.32% -36.96%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.39 £47.47
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £36.71 £27.50 £22.00
% change year-on-year +33.49% +25.00% -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 21 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 21 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 21 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 3,627 £550 - 1,210
North of England +7 1,016 £500 +1.52% 541
South East +1 890 £525 +5.00% 629
Midlands +3 628 £493 -1.01% 276
North West +7 534 £500 - 283
West Midlands +2 472 £494 -5.95% 177
South West +7 445 £538 +7.55% 218
Yorkshire +3 404 £500 +5.26% 178
East of England +5 185 £550 -4.35% 156
East Midlands +7 145 £475 +2.70% 98
North East +3 91 £525 +5.00% 89
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
1 359 (5.15%) SharePoint
2 233 (3.34%) Confluence
3 178 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 159 (2.28%) Apache Spark
5 116 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
6 102 (1.46%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 25 (0.36%) IIS
9 18 (0.26%) CMS
10 13 (0.19%) OpenStack
10 13 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
11 10 (0.14%) ArcGIS
12 8 (0.11%) Umbraco
13 7 (0.10%) Camunda
13 7 (0.10%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.086%) Documentum
15 5 (0.072%) Jupyter
15 5 (0.072%) Oracle Workflow
15 5 (0.072%) Tomcat
Applications
1 107 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 66 (0.95%) Microsoft Office
4 31 (0.44%) 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 97 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Maximo
5 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.10%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.086%) Shopify
8 5 (0.072%) Endur
8 5 (0.072%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.072%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.072%) SimCorp Dimension
8 5 (0.072%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.072%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.057%) Quorum
9 4 (0.057%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,469 (35.43%) AWS
2 1,421 (20.39%) Azure DevOps
3 1,174 (16.85%) GCP
4 914 (13.12%) Entra ID
5 871 (12.50%) Power Platform
6 705 (10.12%) Microsoft 365
7 647 (9.29%) GitHub
8 420 (6.03%) Azure Data Factory
9 385 (5.53%) GitHub Actions
10 304 (4.36%) Serverless
11 294 (4.22%) SaaS
12 283 (4.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 248 (3.56%) Azure AKS
14 242 (3.47%) Azure Monitor
15 231 (3.32%) Power Automate
16 225 (3.23%) PaaS
17 218 (3.13%) Dynamics 365
18 208 (2.99%) PowerApps
19 204 (2.93%) Snowflake
20 190 (2.73%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 464 (6.66%) Firewall
2 346 (4.97%) DNS
3 282 (4.05%) VPN
4 242 (3.47%) Network Security
5 183 (2.63%) DHCP
6 182 (2.61%) WAN
7 148 (2.12%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.69%) LAN
9 111 (1.59%) BGP
10 91 (1.31%) OSPF
10 91 (1.31%) SD-WAN
11 85 (1.22%) VLAN
12 73 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
13 57 (0.82%) SSL
14 55 (0.79%) SAN
15 53 (0.76%) Wireless
16 47 (0.67%) IPsec
17 44 (0.63%) Kerberos
18 43 (0.62%) VXLAN
19 38 (0.55%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 615 (8.83%) Power BI
2 415 (5.96%) SQL Server
3 354 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.33%) Data Lake
5 253 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
6 176 (2.53%) NoSQL
7 171 (2.45%) Azure SQL Database
8 167 (2.40%) Metadata
9 122 (1.75%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.66%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.32%) Big Data
12 82 (1.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 71 (1.02%) MongoDB
14 70 (1.00%) Tableau
15 61 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.82%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.77%) MySQL
17 54 (0.77%) Oracle Database
18 47 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
19 45 (0.65%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 523 (7.51%) JIRA
2 511 (7.33%) Git
3 328 (4.71%) Jenkins
4 244 (3.50%) GitLab
5 101 (1.45%) Selenium
6 58 (0.83%) JUnit
7 52 (0.75%) JMeter
8 49 (0.70%) Postman
9 48 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 42 (0.60%) SonarQube
11 40 (0.57%) Cypress.io
12 37 (0.53%) WebDriver
13 36 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.50%) Maven
14 35 (0.50%) MLflow
15 33 (0.47%) REST Assured
16 28 (0.40%) Gradle
17 25 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
18 24 (0.34%) Gatling
19 23 (0.33%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,749 (25.10%) Social Skills
2 1,368 (19.63%) Finance
3 754 (10.82%) Public Sector
4 681 (9.77%) Analytical Skills
5 392 (5.63%) Banking
6 205 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
7 168 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 166 (2.38%) Retail
9 155 (2.22%) Legal
10 93 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
11 82 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
12 78 (1.12%) Telecoms
13 68 (0.98%) Law
14 64 (0.92%) Marketing
15 63 (0.90%) Front Office
15 63 (0.90%) Investment Banking
16 62 (0.89%) Financial Institution
17 61 (0.88%) Manufacturing
18 54 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
19 52 (0.75%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,240 (17.80%) Architect
2 879 (12.61%) Senior
3 828 (11.88%) Developer
4 610 (8.75%) Azure Engineer
5 562 (8.07%) Lead
6 530 (7.61%) Data Engineer
7 434 (6.23%) Analyst
8 375 (5.38%) Solutions Architect
9 334 (4.79%) DevOps Engineer
10 295 (4.23%) Cloud Engineer
11 275 (3.95%) Consultant
12 265 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 204 (2.93%) Data Architect
14 180 (2.58%) Platform Engineer
15 175 (2.51%) Azure Architect
16 174 (2.50%) Security Engineer
17 164 (2.35%) Business Analyst
18 163 (2.34%) Project Manager
19 160 (2.30%) Technical Architect
20 151 (2.17%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 523 (7.51%) .NET
2 467 (6.70%) REST
3 272 (3.90%) Kafka
4 267 (3.83%) React
5 220 (3.16%) RESTful
6 214 (3.07%) PySpark
7 207 (2.97%) OAuth
8 168 (2.41%) Spring
9 162 (2.32%) Node.js
10 157 (2.25%) JSON
11 152 (2.18%) AngularJS
12 136 (1.95%) Spring Boot
13 132 (1.89%) SAML
14 127 (1.82%) OpenID
15 123 (1.77%) HTML
16 120 (1.72%) .NET Framework
17 119 (1.71%) LDAP
18 117 (1.68%) OAuth2
19 112 (1.61%) SOAP
20 111 (1.59%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 736 (10.56%) Cloud Native
2 324 (4.65%) Onboarding
3 287 (4.12%) Product Ownership
4 228 (3.27%) Data Centre
5 227 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
6 220 (3.16%) Hybrid Cloud
7 205 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
8 185 (2.65%) AI Agents
9 153 (2.20%) Security Posture
10 147 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
11 124 (1.78%) Public Cloud
12 112 (1.61%) Data Structures
13 106 (1.52%) Management Information System
14 93 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
15 86 (1.23%) Replication
16 84 (1.21%) PKI
17 83 (1.19%) Enterprise Cloud
18 76 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
19 71 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
20 60 (0.86%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 830 (11.91%) Windows
2 384 (5.51%) Linux
3 264 (3.79%) Windows Server
4 108 (1.55%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.05%) Unix
6 72 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 65 (0.93%) Mac OS
8 64 (0.92%) Android
9 60 (0.86%) Apple iOS
10 45 (0.65%) VMS
11 42 (0.60%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 12 (0.17%) CentOS
14 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
15 9 (0.13%) Debian
16 6 (0.086%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.072%) AIX
17 5 (0.072%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,529 (36.29%) DevOps
2 2,132 (30.60%) CI/CD
3 1,734 (24.89%) Agile
4 1,108 (15.90%) AI
5 1,058 (15.18%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,017 (14.60%) Migration
7 1,007 (14.45%) Analytics
8 935 (13.42%) Stakeholder Management
9 927 (13.30%) Problem-Solving
10 783 (11.24%) Data Modelling
11 747 (10.72%) Continuous Improvement
12 683 (9.80%) Data Pipeline
13 677 (9.72%) Roadmaps
14 663 (9.51%) Business Intelligence
15 629 (9.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 619 (8.88%) Containerisation
17 608 (8.73%) Microservices
18 596 (8.55%) ETL
19 578 (8.30%) Data Engineering
20 533 (7.65%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,617 (23.21%) Python
2 1,387 (19.91%) SQL
3 728 (10.45%) PowerShell
4 564 (8.09%) Java
5 521 (7.48%) C#
6 379 (5.44%) JavaScript
7 294 (4.22%) Bash
8 253 (3.63%) Bicep
9 247 (3.54%) TypeScript
10 89 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 70 (1.00%) Go
13 54 (0.77%) Scala
14 48 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
15 39 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 34 (0.49%) R
17 29 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 25 (0.36%) Groovy
19 21 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,744 (25.03%) Security Cleared
2 1,414 (20.29%) SC Cleared
3 512 (7.35%) Degree
4 380 (5.45%) Azure Certification
5 230 (3.30%) DV Cleared
6 223 (3.20%) CISSP
7 191 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
8 181 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
9 175 (2.51%) AWS Certification
10 167 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
11 144 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
12 106 (1.52%) CISM
13 88 (1.26%) CCNP
14 71 (1.02%) PMP
15 69 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 53 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 48 (0.69%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 44 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 482 (6.92%) Data Quality
2 360 (5.17%) QA
3 288 (4.13%) GDPR
4 248 (3.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 246 (3.53%) NIST
6 162 (2.32%) Accessibility
7 94 (1.35%) NCSC
8 89 (1.28%) SLA
9 69 (0.99%) PCI DSS
10 67 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
11 66 (0.95%) WCAG
12 64 (0.92%) GRC
13 52 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 48 (0.69%) PMO
15 31 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 30 (0.43%) HIPAA
17 23 (0.33%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.23%) COBIT
19 15 (0.22%) Solvency II
System Software
1 887 (12.73%) Active Directory
2 732 (10.51%) Docker
3 193 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 135 (1.94%) Virtual Desktop
5 127 (1.82%) Virtual Machines
6 91 (1.31%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.90%) vSphere
8 51 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.40%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 16 (0.23%) Postfix
13 13 (0.19%) IAG
14 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.10%) Varnish
16 6 (0.086%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.086%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.072%) RACF
17 5 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.057%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,134 (16.27%) Terraform
2 990 (14.21%) Kubernetes
3 385 (5.53%) Microsoft Intune
4 344 (4.94%) Ansible
5 207 (2.97%) Grafana
6 174 (2.50%) Prometheus
7 139 (1.99%) Single Sign-On
8 100 (1.44%) SCCM
9 54 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 48 (0.69%) Progress Chef
11 43 (0.62%) Argo
11 43 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
12 40 (0.57%) Puppet
13 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 26 (0.37%) Istio
15 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 18 (0.26%) HAProxy
16 18 (0.26%) Packer
17 15 (0.22%) SCOM
18 13 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,295 (32.94%) Microsoft
2 625 (8.97%) Databricks
3 355 (5.09%) ServiceNow
4 276 (3.96%) VMware
5 274 (3.93%) Oracle
6 260 (3.73%) Google
7 204 (2.93%) Cisco
8 198 (2.84%) SAP
9 168 (2.41%) OpenAI
10 153 (2.20%) Splunk
11 134 (1.92%) Salesforce
12 133 (1.91%) Palo Alto
13 131 (1.88%) CyberArk
14 120 (1.72%) Foundry
15 91 (1.31%) Dynatrace
16 88 (1.26%) Zscaler
17 75 (1.08%) Okta
18 67 (0.96%) Fortinet
19 66 (0.95%) Informatica
20 64 (0.92%) Citrix