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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,881 4,035 5,200
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.48% 15.12% 14.03%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.22% 40.21% 42.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,839 2,794 3,806
10th Percentile £365 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £631 £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 159 35 48
10th Percentile £23.00 £25.40 £17.80
25th Percentile £37.75 £28.20 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £42.34
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +6.28% -29.84%
75th Percentile £78.88 £76.72 £61.60
90th Percentile £101.18 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -0.86% +25.60% -23.38%

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 15,560 10,035 12,145
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.00% 37.61% 32.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,462 6,762 8,660
10th Percentile £325 £311 £307
25th Percentile £415 £410 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -1.94% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 556 258 330
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.50 £17.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.06% +14.32% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £39.69 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.13 £67.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £27.63 £22.00
% change year-on-year +35.72% +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 8 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 8 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 8 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 3,600 £550 - 1,163
North of England +7 1,016 £500 +2.83% 607
South East +2 857 £520 +4.00% 685
Midlands +3 606 £500 +1.32% 294
North West +8 531 £500 - 329
West Midlands +1 453 £500 -4.76% 164
South West +6 438 £540 +8.00% 246
Yorkshire +4 404 £500 +5.32% 196
East of England +3 184 £550 - 183
East Midlands +4 142 £500 +8.11% 129
North East +1 94 £525 +5.00% 91
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
1 342 (4.97%) SharePoint
2 218 (3.17%) Confluence
3 175 (2.54%) Microsoft Exchange
4 168 (2.44%) Apache Spark
5 118 (1.71%) Apache Airflow
6 111 (1.61%) Apache
7 37 (0.54%) SAS
8 25 (0.36%) IIS
9 19 (0.28%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 10 (0.15%) Camunda
12 8 (0.12%) Umbraco
13 7 (0.10%) Appian
13 7 (0.10%) Mendix
13 7 (0.10%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.087%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.087%) Documentum
14 6 (0.087%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 102 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 64 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
2 64 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
3 36 (0.52%) MS Visio
4 27 (0.39%) Chatbot
4 27 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (0.20%) AutoCAD
6 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
7 8 (0.12%) Revit
7 8 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.073%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.073%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.058%) Notion
9 4 (0.058%) Trello
10 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.015%) Houdini
11 1 (0.015%) InDesign
11 1 (0.015%) Sketch
11 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 93 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
2 70 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.10%) Maximo
7 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.087%) Endur
8 6 (0.087%) Magento
8 6 (0.087%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.087%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.087%) Shopify
8 6 (0.087%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.073%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.058%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.058%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.058%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.058%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,441 (35.47%) AWS
2 1,393 (20.24%) Azure DevOps
3 1,153 (16.76%) GCP
4 890 (12.93%) Entra ID
5 869 (12.63%) Power Platform
6 699 (10.16%) Microsoft 365
7 617 (8.97%) GitHub
8 419 (6.09%) Azure Data Factory
9 374 (5.44%) GitHub Actions
10 314 (4.56%) Serverless
11 285 (4.14%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 285 (4.14%) SaaS
12 247 (3.59%) Azure AKS
13 231 (3.36%) Power Automate
14 228 (3.31%) Azure Monitor
15 220 (3.20%) PaaS
16 211 (3.07%) Dynamics 365
17 204 (2.96%) Snowflake
18 203 (2.95%) PowerApps
19 187 (2.72%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 428 (6.22%) Firewall
2 328 (4.77%) DNS
3 263 (3.82%) VPN
4 233 (3.39%) Network Security
5 190 (2.76%) WAN
6 172 (2.50%) DHCP
7 121 (1.76%) LAN
8 116 (1.69%) TCP/IP
9 103 (1.50%) BGP
10 98 (1.42%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.18%) OSPF
12 73 (1.06%) VLAN
13 69 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.83%) Kerberos
15 56 (0.81%) SSL
16 52 (0.76%) SAN
17 44 (0.64%) Wireless
18 42 (0.61%) IPsec
18 42 (0.61%) VXLAN
19 38 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 606 (8.81%) Power BI
2 413 (6.00%) SQL Server
3 339 (4.93%) Data Warehouse
4 299 (4.35%) Data Lake
5 246 (3.58%) PostgreSQL
6 178 (2.59%) NoSQL
7 174 (2.53%) Azure SQL Database
8 162 (2.35%) Metadata
9 131 (1.90%) Delta Lake
10 115 (1.67%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.35%) Big Data
12 75 (1.09%) MongoDB
12 75 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 73 (1.06%) Tableau
14 64 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.83%) BigQuery
16 55 (0.80%) Oracle Database
17 51 (0.74%) MySQL
18 48 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
19 46 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 500 (7.27%) JIRA
2 495 (7.19%) Git
3 328 (4.77%) Jenkins
4 251 (3.65%) GitLab
5 102 (1.48%) Selenium
6 59 (0.86%) Postman
7 57 (0.83%) JMeter
8 55 (0.80%) JUnit
9 51 (0.74%) Cucumber
10 44 (0.64%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 38 (0.55%) MLflow
13 35 (0.51%) Cypress.io
13 35 (0.51%) Visual Studio
13 35 (0.51%) WebDriver
14 29 (0.42%) Maven
15 26 (0.38%) Gatling
16 25 (0.36%) LoadRunner
16 25 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.32%) Gradle
General
1 1,727 (25.10%) Social Skills
2 1,350 (19.62%) Finance
3 715 (10.39%) Public Sector
4 656 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
5 395 (5.74%) Banking
6 194 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
7 164 (2.38%) Legal
8 157 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 157 (2.28%) Retail
9 92 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
10 74 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
11 68 (0.99%) Investment Banking
12 67 (0.97%) Front Office
13 63 (0.92%) Financial Institution
13 63 (0.92%) Law
13 63 (0.92%) Telecoms
14 61 (0.89%) Marketing
15 58 (0.84%) Manufacturing
16 54 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
17 47 (0.68%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,231 (17.89%) Architect
2 858 (12.47%) Senior
3 829 (12.05%) Developer
4 597 (8.68%) Azure Engineer
5 544 (7.91%) Data Engineer
6 533 (7.75%) Lead
7 420 (6.10%) Analyst
8 363 (5.28%) Solutions Architect
9 326 (4.74%) DevOps Engineer
10 287 (4.17%) Consultant
11 276 (4.01%) Cloud Engineer
12 239 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 197 (2.86%) Data Architect
14 188 (2.73%) Azure Architect
15 176 (2.56%) Platform Engineer
16 168 (2.44%) Security Engineer
17 165 (2.40%) Technical Architect
18 158 (2.30%) Business Analyst
19 147 (2.14%) Senior Developer
20 145 (2.11%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 522 (7.59%) .NET
2 460 (6.69%) REST
3 271 (3.94%) React
4 265 (3.85%) Kafka
5 222 (3.23%) PySpark
6 217 (3.15%) RESTful
7 213 (3.10%) OAuth
8 175 (2.54%) Spring
9 172 (2.50%) Node.js
10 160 (2.33%) AngularJS
11 145 (2.11%) JSON
11 145 (2.11%) Spring Boot
12 140 (2.03%) SAML
13 133 (1.93%) LDAP
14 129 (1.87%) OpenID
15 121 (1.76%) HTML
16 115 (1.67%) .NET Framework
17 110 (1.60%) SOAP
18 109 (1.58%) OAuth2
19 108 (1.57%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 737 (10.71%) Cloud Native
2 301 (4.37%) Onboarding
3 262 (3.81%) Product Ownership
4 218 (3.17%) Distributed Systems
5 215 (3.12%) Data Centre
6 209 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
7 194 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
8 159 (2.31%) AI Agents
9 146 (2.12%) Security Posture
10 139 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
11 130 (1.89%) Public Cloud
12 102 (1.48%) Data Structures
13 94 (1.37%) Management Information System
13 94 (1.37%) Replication
14 89 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
15 77 (1.12%) Enterprise Cloud
16 75 (1.09%) PKI
17 71 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
18 64 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
19 57 (0.83%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 819 (11.90%) Windows
2 355 (5.16%) Linux
3 260 (3.78%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.54%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.08%) Unix
6 65 (0.94%) Mac OS
6 65 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 59 (0.86%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.84%) Android
9 44 (0.64%) VMS
10 36 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 6 (0.087%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.087%) Rocky
17 6 (0.087%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,504 (36.39%) DevOps
2 2,129 (30.94%) CI/CD
3 1,658 (24.10%) Agile
4 1,091 (15.86%) AI
5 1,038 (15.09%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,008 (14.65%) Analytics
7 989 (14.37%) Migration
8 940 (13.66%) Problem-Solving
9 846 (12.29%) Stakeholder Management
10 777 (11.29%) Data Modelling
11 696 (10.11%) Continuous Improvement
12 688 (10.00%) Data Pipeline
13 675 (9.81%) Roadmaps
14 650 (9.45%) Business Intelligence
15 629 (9.14%) Containerisation
16 606 (8.81%) ETL
17 596 (8.66%) Microservices
18 589 (8.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 580 (8.43%) Data Engineering
20 536 (7.79%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,630 (23.69%) Python
2 1,411 (20.51%) SQL
3 694 (10.09%) PowerShell
4 573 (8.33%) Java
5 531 (7.72%) C#
6 376 (5.46%) JavaScript
7 254 (3.69%) Bash
8 253 (3.68%) TypeScript
9 235 (3.42%) Bicep
10 88 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 78 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 76 (1.10%) Go
13 69 (1.00%) Scala
14 46 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.52%) R
15 36 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 30 (0.44%) Kotlin
17 28 (0.41%) PL/SQL
18 24 (0.35%) Groovy
19 21 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,705 (24.78%) Security Cleared
2 1,396 (20.29%) SC Cleared
3 506 (7.35%) Degree
4 364 (5.29%) Azure Certification
5 219 (3.18%) CISSP
6 196 (2.85%) DV Cleared
7 177 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 177 (2.57%) Microsoft Certification
8 174 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
9 159 (2.31%) AWS Certification
10 143 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
11 105 (1.53%) CISM
12 83 (1.21%) CCNP
13 68 (0.99%) PMP
14 64 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 62 (0.90%) PMI Certification
16 53 (0.77%) Master's Degree
17 49 (0.71%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 482 (7.00%) Data Quality
2 351 (5.10%) QA
3 303 (4.40%) GDPR
4 250 (3.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 241 (3.50%) NIST
6 145 (2.11%) Accessibility
7 94 (1.37%) NCSC
8 86 (1.25%) SLA
9 71 (1.03%) PCI DSS
10 68 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 58 (0.84%) WCAG
13 56 (0.81%) GRC
14 40 (0.58%) PMO
15 35 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 29 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.35%) SOC 2
18 23 (0.33%) NIST 800
19 16 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 16 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 866 (12.59%) Active Directory
2 720 (10.46%) Docker
3 193 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 128 (1.86%) Virtual Desktop
5 126 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
6 89 (1.29%) Hyper-V
7 60 (0.87%) vSphere
8 51 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.41%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.13%) IAG
15 8 (0.12%) Varnish
16 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.087%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.073%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
18 5 (0.073%) RACF
18 5 (0.073%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,112 (16.16%) Terraform
2 976 (14.18%) Kubernetes
3 382 (5.55%) Microsoft Intune
4 320 (4.65%) Ansible
5 202 (2.94%) Grafana
6 167 (2.43%) Prometheus
7 148 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
8 95 (1.38%) SCCM
9 68 (0.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
11 42 (0.61%) Progress Chef
12 41 (0.60%) Argo
13 39 (0.57%) Puppet
14 33 (0.48%) FortiGate
15 28 (0.41%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.28%) HAProxy
18 17 (0.25%) Packer
19 16 (0.23%) HP ALM
20 13 (0.19%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,246 (32.64%) Microsoft
2 643 (9.34%) Databricks
3 344 (5.00%) ServiceNow
4 272 (3.95%) Oracle
5 265 (3.85%) VMware
6 254 (3.69%) Google
7 196 (2.85%) SAP
8 186 (2.70%) Cisco
9 169 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 142 (2.06%) Splunk
11 129 (1.87%) Palo Alto
11 129 (1.87%) Salesforce
12 121 (1.76%) CyberArk
13 119 (1.73%) Foundry
14 90 (1.31%) Okta
15 89 (1.29%) Dynatrace
16 78 (1.13%) Zscaler
17 69 (1.00%) Informatica
18 65 (0.94%) Citrix
19 63 (0.92%) Fortinet