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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,051 4,092 5,011
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.62% 14.93% 14.44%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.52% 39.99% 43.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,943 2,840 3,678
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 32 36
10th Percentile £19.50 £26.00 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £27.24 £22.24
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +30.98% -45.00%
75th Percentile £79.75 £76.56 £54.13
90th Percentile £100.76 £100.00 £72.34
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £33.00
% change year-on-year +16.75% +49.24% -44.91%

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 15,839 10,232 11,581
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.09% 37.34% 33.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,573 6,915 8,251
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £420 £408 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.24% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £519 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.75% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 560 267 270
10th Percentile £16.70 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £38.25 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.09% +14.32% -36.77%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £45.57
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £36.87 £27.50 £22.15
% change year-on-year +34.05% +24.15% -36.71%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 3,677 £550 - 1,283
North of England +7 1,025 £500 +3.09% 572
South East +2 910 £525 +5.00% 657
Midlands +3 636 £494 +1.46% 279
North West +5 538 £500 +1.83% 303
West Midlands +4 478 £494 -5.95% 176
South West +7 443 £534 +6.75% 242
Yorkshire +3 408 £500 +5.26% 181
East of England +7 182 £550 - 173
East Midlands +9 147 £481 +4.05% 102
North East +2 94 £520 +4.00% 98
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
1 369 (5.23%) SharePoint
2 241 (3.42%) Confluence
3 182 (2.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 164 (2.33%) Apache Spark
5 120 (1.70%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.55%) Apache
7 38 (0.54%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 15 (0.21%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 13 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 9 (0.13%) SharePoint Server
14 7 (0.099%) nginx
14 7 (0.099%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.099%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.085%) Camunda
15 6 (0.085%) Documentum
15 6 (0.085%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.085%) Mendix
Applications
1 108 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
3 66 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (0.43%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.41%) Chatbot
6 27 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) 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
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.028%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.014%) InDesign
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 100 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 70 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 27 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 15 (0.21%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Maximo
5 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
5 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.099%) Shopify
7 6 (0.085%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.085%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.071%) SimCorp Dimension
8 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.057%) Adobe Campaign
9 4 (0.057%) Endur
9 4 (0.057%) Remedy AR System
9 4 (0.057%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,495 (35.39%) AWS
2 1,462 (20.73%) Azure DevOps
3 1,188 (16.85%) GCP
4 920 (13.05%) Entra ID
5 890 (12.62%) Power Platform
6 708 (10.04%) Microsoft 365
7 650 (9.22%) GitHub
8 427 (6.06%) Azure Data Factory
9 389 (5.52%) GitHub Actions
10 309 (4.38%) Serverless
11 292 (4.14%) SaaS
12 288 (4.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 255 (3.62%) Azure AKS
14 250 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
15 241 (3.42%) Power Automate
16 227 (3.22%) Dynamics 365
17 225 (3.19%) PaaS
18 217 (3.08%) PowerApps
19 207 (2.94%) Snowflake
20 199 (2.82%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 469 (6.65%) Firewall
2 341 (4.84%) DNS
3 285 (4.04%) VPN
4 250 (3.55%) Network Security
5 185 (2.62%) WAN
6 178 (2.52%) DHCP
7 150 (2.13%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.67%) LAN
9 112 (1.59%) BGP
10 92 (1.30%) OSPF
11 90 (1.28%) SD-WAN
12 86 (1.22%) VLAN
13 74 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
14 60 (0.85%) SSL
15 56 (0.79%) SAN
16 53 (0.75%) Wireless
17 47 (0.67%) IPsec
18 44 (0.62%) VXLAN
19 38 (0.54%) Internet
20 37 (0.52%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 628 (8.91%) Power BI
2 420 (5.96%) SQL Server
3 362 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
4 313 (4.44%) Data Lake
5 251 (3.56%) PostgreSQL
6 188 (2.67%) NoSQL
7 177 (2.51%) Metadata
8 174 (2.47%) Azure SQL Database
9 126 (1.79%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.66%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.26%) Big Data
12 85 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 70 (0.99%) MongoDB
13 70 (0.99%) Tableau
14 60 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
15 58 (0.82%) MySQL
16 56 (0.79%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.77%) Oracle Database
18 50 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
19 48 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 530 (7.52%) Git
1 530 (7.52%) JIRA
2 334 (4.74%) Jenkins
3 250 (3.55%) GitLab
4 102 (1.45%) Selenium
5 60 (0.85%) JUnit
6 51 (0.72%) JMeter
7 49 (0.69%) Cucumber
7 49 (0.69%) Postman
8 44 (0.62%) SonarQube
9 42 (0.60%) Cypress.io
10 38 (0.54%) WebDriver
11 37 (0.52%) Maven
12 36 (0.51%) MLflow
12 36 (0.51%) Visual Studio
13 33 (0.47%) REST Assured
14 29 (0.41%) Gradle
15 26 (0.37%) Gatling
16 25 (0.35%) Bitbucket
17 24 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,780 (25.24%) Social Skills
2 1,396 (19.80%) Finance
3 773 (10.96%) Public Sector
4 696 (9.87%) Analytical Skills
5 400 (5.67%) Banking
6 202 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 174 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 172 (2.44%) Retail
9 152 (2.16%) Legal
10 91 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
11 83 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 80 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
13 70 (0.99%) Law
14 68 (0.96%) Manufacturing
15 66 (0.94%) Marketing
16 64 (0.91%) Financial Institution
16 64 (0.91%) Front Office
17 62 (0.88%) Investment Banking
18 52 (0.74%) Aerospace
18 52 (0.74%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,248 (17.70%) Architect
2 891 (12.64%) Senior
3 840 (11.91%) Developer
4 623 (8.84%) Azure Engineer
5 575 (8.15%) Lead
6 538 (7.63%) Data Engineer
7 435 (6.17%) Analyst
8 385 (5.46%) Solutions Architect
9 342 (4.85%) DevOps Engineer
10 305 (4.33%) Cloud Engineer
11 277 (3.93%) Consultant
12 266 (3.77%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 211 (2.99%) Data Architect
14 188 (2.67%) Platform Engineer
15 176 (2.50%) Security Engineer
16 174 (2.47%) Azure Architect
17 163 (2.31%) Business Analyst
18 162 (2.30%) Project Manager
19 161 (2.28%) Technical Architect
20 155 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 539 (7.64%) .NET
2 487 (6.91%) REST
3 277 (3.93%) Kafka
4 269 (3.82%) React
5 227 (3.22%) RESTful
6 222 (3.15%) PySpark
7 211 (2.99%) OAuth
8 168 (2.38%) Spring
9 164 (2.33%) JSON
10 163 (2.31%) Node.js
11 154 (2.18%) AngularJS
12 136 (1.93%) Spring Boot
13 135 (1.91%) SAML
14 131 (1.86%) OpenID
15 126 (1.79%) .NET Framework
15 126 (1.79%) HTML
16 119 (1.69%) OAuth2
17 114 (1.62%) Middleware
18 113 (1.60%) LDAP
18 113 (1.60%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 750 (10.64%) Cloud Native
2 336 (4.77%) Onboarding
3 292 (4.14%) Product Ownership
4 236 (3.35%) Distributed Systems
5 226 (3.21%) Data Centre
6 222 (3.15%) Hybrid Cloud
7 203 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
8 195 (2.77%) AI Agents
9 161 (2.28%) Enterprise Software
10 154 (2.18%) Security Posture
11 128 (1.82%) Data Structures
12 126 (1.79%) Public Cloud
13 110 (1.56%) Management Information System
14 94 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
15 88 (1.25%) Enterprise Cloud
16 85 (1.21%) PKI
17 81 (1.15%) Replication
18 76 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
19 71 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
20 62 (0.88%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 834 (11.83%) Windows
2 395 (5.60%) Linux
3 267 (3.79%) Windows Server
4 107 (1.52%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.06%) Unix
6 73 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 64 (0.91%) Mac OS
8 63 (0.89%) Android
9 58 (0.82%) Apple iOS
10 45 (0.64%) VMS
11 43 (0.61%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.085%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.071%) AIX
18 5 (0.071%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,571 (36.46%) DevOps
2 2,162 (30.66%) CI/CD
3 1,763 (25.00%) Agile
4 1,129 (16.01%) AI
5 1,081 (15.33%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,029 (14.59%) Migration
7 1,026 (14.55%) Analytics
8 973 (13.80%) Stakeholder Management
9 943 (13.37%) Problem-Solving
10 802 (11.37%) Data Modelling
11 760 (10.78%) Continuous Improvement
12 690 (9.79%) Data Pipeline
13 688 (9.76%) Roadmaps
14 676 (9.59%) Business Intelligence
15 652 (9.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 633 (8.98%) Containerisation
17 615 (8.72%) Microservices
18 597 (8.47%) ETL
19 586 (8.31%) Data Engineering
20 547 (7.76%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,644 (23.32%) Python
2 1,415 (20.07%) SQL
3 739 (10.48%) PowerShell
4 575 (8.15%) Java
5 538 (7.63%) C#
6 394 (5.59%) JavaScript
7 306 (4.34%) Bash
8 269 (3.82%) Bicep
9 249 (3.53%) TypeScript
10 90 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.91%) Go
13 51 (0.72%) Scala
14 48 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
15 40 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 35 (0.50%) Kotlin
16 35 (0.50%) R
17 29 (0.41%) PL/SQL
18 26 (0.37%) Groovy
19 22 (0.31%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,771 (25.12%) Security Cleared
2 1,433 (20.32%) SC Cleared
3 520 (7.37%) Degree
4 384 (5.45%) Azure Certification
5 234 (3.32%) DV Cleared
6 222 (3.15%) CISSP
7 193 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
8 183 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
9 172 (2.44%) AWS Certification
10 167 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
11 150 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
12 107 (1.52%) CISM
13 91 (1.29%) CCNP
14 71 (1.01%) PMP
15 68 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 53 (0.75%) Master's Degree
18 49 (0.69%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 44 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 497 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 364 (5.16%) QA
3 292 (4.14%) GDPR
4 249 (3.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 249 (3.53%) NIST
5 165 (2.34%) Accessibility
6 93 (1.32%) NCSC
7 91 (1.29%) SLA
8 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
9 68 (0.96%) WCAG
10 67 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
10 67 (0.95%) GRC
11 52 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 49 (0.69%) PMO
13 30 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 29 (0.41%) HIPAA
15 23 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 22 (0.31%) NIST 800
17 16 (0.23%) COBIT
18 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 879 (12.47%) Active Directory
2 743 (10.54%) Docker
3 191 (2.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.93%) Virtual Desktop
5 128 (1.82%) Virtual Machines
6 90 (1.28%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.87%) vSphere
8 51 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.40%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 16 (0.23%) Postfix
13 13 (0.18%) IAG
14 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.099%) Varnish
16 6 (0.085%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.071%) RACF
17 5 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.057%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,154 (16.37%) Terraform
2 1,010 (14.32%) Kubernetes
3 386 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
4 353 (5.01%) Ansible
5 212 (3.01%) Grafana
6 177 (2.51%) Prometheus
7 136 (1.93%) Single Sign-On
8 101 (1.43%) SCCM
9 51 (0.72%) Progress Chef
10 45 (0.64%) Argo
11 44 (0.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 43 (0.61%) Puppet
13 42 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
14 32 (0.45%) FortiGate
15 27 (0.38%) Istio
16 20 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) Packer
18 18 (0.26%) HAProxy
19 16 (0.23%) SCOM
20 13 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,322 (32.93%) Microsoft
2 643 (9.12%) Databricks
3 362 (5.13%) ServiceNow
4 278 (3.94%) VMware
5 274 (3.89%) Oracle
6 269 (3.82%) Google
7 207 (2.94%) Cisco
8 201 (2.85%) SAP
9 174 (2.47%) OpenAI
10 158 (2.24%) Splunk
11 136 (1.93%) CyberArk
12 135 (1.91%) Palo Alto
13 129 (1.83%) Salesforce
14 123 (1.74%) Foundry
15 95 (1.35%) Dynatrace
16 90 (1.28%) Zscaler
17 74 (1.05%) Okta
18 68 (0.96%) Informatica
19 66 (0.94%) Fortinet
20 64 (0.91%) Citrix