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

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,044 3,846 4,922
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.42% 15.77% 13.27%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.82% 41.88% 41.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,353 2,736 3,629
10th Percentile £358 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year - -3.23% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £648
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 29 50
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.78 £26.45 £22.53
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -35.39%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £84.00 £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 14,115 9,184 11,852
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.01% 37.65% 31.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,742 6,440 8,523
10th Percentile £313 £313 £281
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 435 187 318
10th Percentile £15.77 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £15.86
Median hourly rate £43.61 £26.50 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +64.57% +27.59% -24.47%
75th Percentile £67.84 £42.49 £32.69
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.20 £59.97
UK median hourly rate £40.64 £27.50 £20.99
% change year-on-year +47.78% +31.05% -30.91%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 3,248 £538 -2.27% 1,014
North of England +3 827 £500 +5.26% 567
South East +2 772 £500 -4.76% 634
Midlands 0 498 £488 -6.25% 319
North West +1 449 £500 - 288
West Midlands -1 366 £500 -4.76% 189
South West +6 360 £500 -4.76% 253
Yorkshire 0 335 £500 +17.65% 198
East of England +9 154 £550 -8.33% 201
East Midlands 0 123 £447 -4.89% 130
North East -5 50 £525 +3.70% 85
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
1 281 (4.65%) SharePoint
2 174 (2.88%) Microsoft Exchange
3 171 (2.83%) Apache Spark
4 167 (2.76%) Confluence
5 94 (1.56%) Apache
6 90 (1.49%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) SAS
8 20 (0.33%) IIS
9 16 (0.26%) Appian
9 16 (0.26%) OpenStack
10 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
10 15 (0.25%) Camunda
11 12 (0.20%) CMS
12 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.18%) Mendix
13 9 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 8 (0.13%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 5 (0.083%) BizTalk Server
16 5 (0.083%) WebLogic
Applications
1 108 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 54 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.083%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.083%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.066%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.066%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.066%) Weka
11 3 (0.050%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) Revit
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 103 (1.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.083%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.066%) Dynamics AX
9 4 (0.066%) Elite 3E
9 4 (0.066%) Endur
9 4 (0.066%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.066%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.066%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.050%) Cloudability
10 3 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
10 3 (0.050%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 3 (0.050%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,099 (34.73%) AWS
2 1,259 (20.83%) Azure DevOps
3 1,159 (19.18%) GCP
4 804 (13.30%) Power Platform
5 765 (12.66%) Entra ID
6 662 (10.95%) Microsoft 365
7 578 (9.56%) GitHub
8 457 (7.56%) Azure Data Factory
9 328 (5.43%) GitHub Actions
10 327 (5.41%) Serverless
11 296 (4.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 251 (4.15%) SaaS
13 239 (3.95%) Dynamics 365
14 224 (3.71%) Azure AKS
15 217 (3.59%) Azure Monitor
16 213 (3.52%) Power Automate
17 211 (3.49%) PaaS
18 191 (3.16%) Azure Functions
19 187 (3.09%) Azure Logic Apps
20 174 (2.88%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 385 (6.37%) Firewall
2 270 (4.47%) DNS
3 234 (3.87%) VPN
4 199 (3.29%) Network Security
5 154 (2.55%) WAN
6 149 (2.47%) DHCP
7 120 (1.99%) LAN
8 91 (1.51%) TCP/IP
9 75 (1.24%) VLAN
10 73 (1.21%) SD-WAN
10 73 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
11 65 (1.08%) Kerberos
12 49 (0.81%) BGP
13 43 (0.71%) OSPF
14 38 (0.63%) SAN
14 38 (0.63%) Wireless
15 36 (0.60%) SSL
16 35 (0.58%) HTTP
17 31 (0.51%) Internet
18 29 (0.48%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 559 (9.25%) Power BI
2 361 (5.97%) SQL Server
3 336 (5.56%) Data Warehouse
4 290 (4.80%) Data Lake
5 211 (3.49%) Azure SQL Database
6 208 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
7 182 (3.01%) NoSQL
8 149 (2.47%) Metadata
9 131 (2.17%) Delta Lake
10 98 (1.62%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 82 (1.36%) Big Data
13 79 (1.31%) Tableau
14 77 (1.27%) MongoDB
15 61 (1.01%) Oracle Database
16 57 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.91%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.78%) MySQL
18 47 (0.78%) Star Schema
19 45 (0.74%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 441 (7.30%) Git
2 418 (6.92%) JIRA
3 297 (4.91%) Jenkins
4 220 (3.64%) GitLab
5 105 (1.74%) Selenium
6 66 (1.09%) Postman
7 58 (0.96%) JUnit
8 56 (0.93%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.83%) JMeter
10 49 (0.81%) MLflow
11 42 (0.69%) REST Assured
12 34 (0.56%) Cypress.io
12 34 (0.56%) SonarQube
13 33 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
14 32 (0.53%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.45%) TestRail
16 26 (0.43%) Visual Studio
17 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
18 21 (0.35%) Mockito
18 21 (0.35%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,649 (27.28%) Social Skills
2 1,128 (18.66%) Finance
3 631 (10.44%) Public Sector
4 606 (10.03%) Analytical Skills
5 351 (5.81%) Banking
6 191 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
7 138 (2.28%) Legal
8 100 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 87 (1.44%) Retail
10 84 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
11 79 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 74 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
13 65 (1.08%) Financial Institution
13 65 (1.08%) Law
13 65 (1.08%) Marketing
14 61 (1.01%) Telecoms
15 58 (0.96%) Front Office
16 57 (0.94%) Investment Banking
17 44 (0.73%) Local Government
18 35 (0.58%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 994 (16.45%) Architect
2 787 (13.02%) Developer
3 730 (12.08%) Senior
4 557 (9.22%) Azure Engineer
5 520 (8.60%) Data Engineer
6 457 (7.56%) Lead
7 384 (6.35%) Analyst
8 298 (4.93%) DevOps Engineer
9 254 (4.20%) Solutions Architect
10 246 (4.07%) Consultant
11 181 (2.99%) Cloud Engineer
12 174 (2.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 157 (2.60%) Platform Engineer
14 152 (2.51%) Azure Architect
15 144 (2.38%) Security Engineer
16 136 (2.25%) Senior Developer
17 134 (2.22%) Data Architect
18 127 (2.10%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 125 (2.07%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 123 (2.04%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 455 (7.53%) .NET
2 389 (6.44%) REST
3 260 (4.30%) React
4 250 (4.14%) Kafka
5 229 (3.79%) PySpark
6 211 (3.49%) Node.js
7 192 (3.18%) RESTful
8 183 (3.03%) Spring
9 173 (2.86%) OAuth
10 160 (2.65%) AngularJS
11 148 (2.45%) LDAP
12 146 (2.42%) Spring Boot
13 122 (2.02%) Middleware
14 121 (2.00%) HTML
14 121 (2.00%) JSON
15 115 (1.90%) SAML
16 114 (1.89%) SOAP
17 106 (1.75%) PyTorch
18 104 (1.72%) YAML
19 103 (1.70%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 561 (9.28%) Cloud Native
2 237 (3.92%) Onboarding
3 214 (3.54%) Product Ownership
4 171 (2.83%) Hybrid Cloud
5 155 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
6 149 (2.47%) Security Posture
7 144 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 141 (2.33%) Data Centre
9 134 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
9 134 (2.22%) Public Cloud
10 105 (1.74%) AI Agents
11 82 (1.36%) Data Structures
11 82 (1.36%) Replication
12 67 (1.11%) Management Information System
13 64 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
14 58 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
14 58 (0.96%) PKI
15 49 (0.81%) Low-Code
16 47 (0.78%) Algorithms
17 46 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 673 (11.14%) Windows
2 313 (5.18%) Linux
3 205 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 61 (1.01%) VMS
6 56 (0.93%) Unix
7 52 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 45 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.65%) Apple iOS
10 31 (0.51%) Android
11 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.28%) Ubuntu
12 17 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.099%) CentOS
17 5 (0.083%) AIX
17 5 (0.083%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.083%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,256 (37.33%) DevOps
2 1,836 (30.38%) CI/CD
3 1,409 (23.31%) Agile
4 971 (16.07%) Problem-Solving
5 927 (15.34%) Analytics
6 865 (14.31%) AI
7 833 (13.78%) Infrastructure as Code
8 809 (13.39%) Migration
9 699 (11.57%) Data Modelling
10 622 (10.29%) Business Intelligence
11 614 (10.16%) Stakeholder Management
12 587 (9.71%) Continuous Improvement
13 581 (9.61%) Data Pipeline
14 576 (9.53%) ETL
15 567 (9.38%) Containerisation
16 538 (8.90%) Data Engineering
17 536 (8.87%) Microservices
18 507 (8.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 482 (7.97%) Machine Learning
20 481 (7.96%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,535 (25.40%) Python
2 1,375 (22.75%) SQL
3 649 (10.74%) PowerShell
4 515 (8.52%) C#
5 507 (8.39%) Java
6 403 (6.67%) JavaScript
7 231 (3.82%) TypeScript
8 223 (3.69%) Bash
9 195 (3.23%) Bicep
10 97 (1.60%) Scala
11 78 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 75 (1.24%) Go
13 72 (1.19%) PL/SQL
14 71 (1.17%) T-SQL
15 61 (1.01%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.69%) R
17 34 (0.56%) Shell Script
18 21 (0.35%) C++
18 21 (0.35%) PHP
19 16 (0.26%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,515 (25.07%) Security Cleared
2 1,256 (20.78%) SC Cleared
3 446 (7.38%) Degree
4 347 (5.74%) Azure Certification
5 187 (3.09%) Computer Science Degree
6 162 (2.68%) CISSP
7 142 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
8 126 (2.08%) Cisco Certification
9 119 (1.97%) DV Cleared
10 115 (1.90%) AWS Certification
11 96 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
12 94 (1.56%) CISM
13 69 (1.14%) CCNP
14 59 (0.98%) Master's Degree
15 58 (0.96%) PMP
16 55 (0.91%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
18 51 (0.84%) ISTQB
19 41 (0.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (7.28%) Data Quality
2 343 (5.68%) GDPR
3 323 (5.34%) QA
4 250 (4.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 224 (3.71%) NIST
6 91 (1.51%) Accessibility
7 84 (1.39%) NCSC
8 81 (1.34%) PCI DSS
9 58 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 55 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 54 (0.89%) SLA
12 47 (0.78%) PMO
13 38 (0.63%) GRC
14 30 (0.50%) WCAG
15 27 (0.45%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.41%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 18 (0.30%) PSD2
20 17 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 798 (13.20%) Active Directory
2 690 (11.42%) Docker
3 187 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
5 90 (1.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 87 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 74 (1.22%) vSphere
8 35 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.53%) VMware NSX
10 23 (0.38%) Firmware
11 17 (0.28%) NFS
12 10 (0.17%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.099%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.099%) RACF
14 6 (0.099%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.099%) Varnish
15 5 (0.083%) KVM
15 5 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.083%) Snort
Systems Management
1 955 (15.80%) Terraform
2 896 (14.82%) Kubernetes
3 332 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 261 (4.32%) Ansible
5 157 (2.60%) Grafana
6 137 (2.27%) Single Sign-On
7 129 (2.13%) Prometheus
8 106 (1.75%) SCCM
9 70 (1.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.63%) Argo
11 34 (0.56%) Istio
12 30 (0.50%) Puppet
13 29 (0.48%) vCenter Server
14 26 (0.43%) Progress Chef
15 23 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
16 21 (0.35%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
18 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
18 16 (0.26%) Nmap
18 16 (0.26%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,966 (32.53%) Microsoft
2 629 (10.41%) Databricks
3 291 (4.81%) Oracle
4 279 (4.62%) Google
5 269 (4.45%) ServiceNow
6 257 (4.25%) VMware
7 177 (2.93%) SAP
8 162 (2.68%) Cisco
9 160 (2.65%) OpenAI
10 138 (2.28%) Splunk
11 129 (2.13%) CyberArk
12 105 (1.74%) Foundry
13 86 (1.42%) Palo Alto
14 79 (1.31%) Salesforce
15 78 (1.29%) Okta
16 70 (1.16%) IBM
17 67 (1.11%) BeyondTrust
17 67 (1.11%) Citrix
18 63 (1.04%) Red Hat
19 60 (0.99%) Informatica