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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,005 4,098 4,936
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.62% 14.90% 14.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.62% 39.89% 43.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,909 2,844 3,611
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £423 £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 £747 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 33 32
10th Percentile £19.50 £20.30 £17.84
25th Percentile £31.25 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -40.32%
75th Percentile £79.50 £76.25 £58.00
90th Percentile £100.68 £100.00 £74.47
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -40.32%

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 15,700 10,274 11,391
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.02% 37.35% 33.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,475 6,952 8,104
10th Percentile £325 £311 £313
25th Percentile £423 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.49% -2.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 564 268 254
10th Percentile £16.62 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.10
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% +14.32% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.48 £49.69
90th Percentile £84.63 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £27.38 £22.50
% change year-on-year +29.68% +21.67% -35.71%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 3,663 £550 - 1,395
North of England +7 1,012 £500 +3.09% 622
South East +2 895 £525 +5.00% 683
Midlands +4 634 £496 +0.25% 309
North West +6 530 £500 +2.30% 339
West Midlands +2 480 £494 -5.95% 200
South West +7 441 £538 +7.55% 260
Yorkshire +4 403 £500 +5.26% 189
East of England +3 179 £538 -2.27% 180
East Midlands +11 142 £488 +5.41% 109
North East -2 94 £520 +6.67% 106
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
1 372 (5.31%) SharePoint
2 240 (3.43%) Confluence
3 177 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 159 (2.27%) Apache Spark
5 119 (1.70%) Apache Airflow
6 105 (1.50%) Apache
7 39 (0.56%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 15 (0.21%) CMS
10 13 (0.19%) OpenStack
10 13 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
13 7 (0.100%) nginx
13 7 (0.100%) Umbraco
13 7 (0.100%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.086%) Camunda
14 6 (0.086%) Documentum
14 6 (0.086%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.086%) Mendix
Applications
1 106 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
3 67 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
4 31 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.41%) Chatbot
6 26 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
8 10 (0.14%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
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 (0.029%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.014%) PTC Creo
14 1 (0.014%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 98 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) 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%) SAP MDG
5 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.100%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.100%) Shopify
7 6 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.071%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.057%) Adobe Campaign
9 4 (0.057%) Endur
9 4 (0.057%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.057%) SAP MM
9 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,482 (35.43%) AWS
2 1,460 (20.84%) Azure DevOps
3 1,186 (16.93%) GCP
4 903 (12.89%) Entra ID
5 880 (12.56%) Power Platform
6 704 (10.05%) Microsoft 365
7 649 (9.26%) GitHub
8 420 (6.00%) Azure Data Factory
9 393 (5.61%) GitHub Actions
10 306 (4.37%) Serverless
11 287 (4.10%) SaaS
12 284 (4.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 255 (3.64%) Azure AKS
14 249 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
15 244 (3.48%) Power Automate
16 224 (3.20%) Dynamics 365
17 220 (3.14%) PaaS
18 219 (3.13%) PowerApps
19 204 (2.91%) Snowflake
20 194 (2.77%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 469 (6.70%) Firewall
2 338 (4.83%) DNS
3 285 (4.07%) VPN
4 255 (3.64%) Network Security
5 186 (2.66%) WAN
6 174 (2.48%) DHCP
7 153 (2.18%) TCP/IP
8 116 (1.66%) LAN
9 111 (1.58%) BGP
10 91 (1.30%) OSPF
10 91 (1.30%) SD-WAN
11 86 (1.23%) VLAN
12 71 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.87%) SSL
14 55 (0.79%) SAN
15 53 (0.76%) Wireless
16 45 (0.64%) IPsec
16 45 (0.64%) VXLAN
17 39 (0.56%) Internet
18 38 (0.54%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 628 (8.97%) Power BI
2 417 (5.95%) SQL Server
3 356 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
4 308 (4.40%) Data Lake
5 253 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
6 184 (2.63%) NoSQL
7 178 (2.54%) Metadata
8 174 (2.48%) Azure SQL Database
9 123 (1.76%) Delta Lake
10 115 (1.64%) Relational Database
11 87 (1.24%) Big Data
12 84 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 72 (1.03%) MongoDB
14 66 (0.94%) Tableau
15 62 (0.89%) MySQL
16 59 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
17 54 (0.77%) BigQuery
18 52 (0.74%) Oracle Database
19 50 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
19 50 (0.71%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 527 (7.52%) JIRA
2 525 (7.49%) Git
3 339 (4.84%) Jenkins
4 259 (3.70%) GitLab
5 102 (1.46%) Selenium
6 59 (0.84%) JUnit
7 52 (0.74%) JMeter
8 49 (0.70%) Cucumber
8 49 (0.70%) Postman
9 46 (0.66%) SonarQube
10 42 (0.60%) Cypress.io
11 39 (0.56%) Maven
12 38 (0.54%) WebDriver
13 34 (0.49%) MLflow
13 34 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 34 (0.49%) Visual Studio
14 29 (0.41%) Gradle
15 27 (0.39%) Bitbucket
15 27 (0.39%) Gatling
16 23 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,763 (25.17%) Social Skills
2 1,375 (19.63%) Finance
3 766 (10.94%) Public Sector
4 683 (9.75%) Analytical Skills
5 395 (5.64%) Banking
6 193 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
7 175 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 174 (2.48%) Retail
9 150 (2.14%) Legal
10 90 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
11 83 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 80 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
13 70 (1.00%) Law
13 70 (1.00%) Manufacturing
14 64 (0.91%) Financial Institution
15 63 (0.90%) Front Office
15 63 (0.90%) Investment Banking
16 61 (0.87%) Marketing
17 56 (0.80%) Military
18 55 (0.79%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,247 (17.80%) Architect
2 893 (12.75%) Senior
3 836 (11.93%) Developer
4 616 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 576 (8.22%) Lead
6 542 (7.74%) Data Engineer
7 427 (6.10%) Analyst
8 384 (5.48%) Solutions Architect
9 329 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
10 305 (4.35%) Cloud Engineer
11 272 (3.88%) Consultant
12 269 (3.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 213 (3.04%) Data Architect
14 188 (2.68%) Platform Engineer
15 176 (2.51%) Security Engineer
16 175 (2.50%) Azure Architect
17 162 (2.31%) Project Manager
18 159 (2.27%) Business Analyst
18 159 (2.27%) Technical Architect
19 156 (2.23%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 532 (7.59%) .NET
2 480 (6.85%) REST
3 274 (3.91%) Kafka
4 267 (3.81%) React
5 224 (3.20%) PySpark
6 222 (3.17%) RESTful
7 212 (3.03%) OAuth
8 164 (2.34%) Spring
9 161 (2.30%) JSON
10 157 (2.24%) Node.js
11 154 (2.20%) AngularJS
12 136 (1.94%) SAML
13 133 (1.90%) OpenID
14 130 (1.86%) Spring Boot
15 123 (1.76%) .NET Framework
16 121 (1.73%) HTML
17 120 (1.71%) OAuth2
18 112 (1.60%) Middleware
18 112 (1.60%) SOAP
19 100 (1.43%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 744 (10.62%) Cloud Native
2 338 (4.83%) Onboarding
3 286 (4.08%) Product Ownership
4 235 (3.35%) Distributed Systems
5 227 (3.24%) Data Centre
6 221 (3.15%) Hybrid Cloud
7 203 (2.90%) Legacy Systems
8 197 (2.81%) AI Agents
9 160 (2.28%) Enterprise Software
10 152 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 126 (1.80%) Data Structures
12 122 (1.74%) Public Cloud
13 112 (1.60%) Management Information System
14 94 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 91 (1.30%) Enterprise Cloud
16 89 (1.27%) PKI
17 75 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
18 74 (1.06%) Replication
19 68 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
20 60 (0.86%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 837 (11.95%) Windows
2 398 (5.68%) Linux
3 274 (3.91%) Windows Server
4 107 (1.53%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.07%) Unix
6 74 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 64 (0.91%) Android
7 64 (0.91%) Mac OS
8 57 (0.81%) Apple iOS
9 45 (0.64%) VMS
10 43 (0.61%) Ubuntu
11 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.086%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.071%) AIX
18 5 (0.071%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,544 (36.32%) DevOps
2 2,141 (30.56%) CI/CD
3 1,761 (25.14%) Agile
4 1,119 (15.97%) AI
5 1,076 (15.36%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,027 (14.66%) Migration
7 1,020 (14.56%) Analytics
8 985 (14.06%) Stakeholder Management
9 922 (13.16%) Problem-Solving
10 798 (11.39%) Data Modelling
11 764 (10.91%) Continuous Improvement
12 689 (9.84%) Data Pipeline
13 677 (9.66%) Business Intelligence
14 670 (9.56%) Roadmaps
15 661 (9.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 626 (8.94%) Containerisation
17 602 (8.59%) Microservices
18 590 (8.42%) ETL
19 583 (8.32%) Data Engineering
20 550 (7.85%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,635 (23.34%) Python
2 1,394 (19.90%) SQL
3 721 (10.29%) PowerShell
4 573 (8.18%) Java
5 527 (7.52%) C#
6 399 (5.70%) JavaScript
7 310 (4.43%) Bash
8 270 (3.85%) Bicep
9 245 (3.50%) TypeScript
10 90 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.91%) Go
13 49 (0.70%) Scala
14 46 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
15 40 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 36 (0.51%) Kotlin
17 33 (0.47%) R
18 29 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 28 (0.40%) Groovy
20 24 (0.34%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,769 (25.25%) Security Cleared
2 1,433 (20.46%) SC Cleared
3 520 (7.42%) Degree
4 385 (5.50%) Azure Certification
5 236 (3.37%) DV Cleared
6 220 (3.14%) CISSP
7 192 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
8 183 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
9 174 (2.48%) AWS Certification
10 168 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
11 154 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
12 105 (1.50%) CISM
13 90 (1.28%) CCNP
14 72 (1.03%) PMP
15 69 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 67 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 52 (0.74%) Master's Degree
18 50 (0.71%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.61%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 494 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 369 (5.27%) QA
3 281 (4.01%) GDPR
4 247 (3.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 246 (3.51%) NIST
6 167 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 94 (1.34%) SLA
8 92 (1.31%) NCSC
9 68 (0.97%) PCI DSS
9 68 (0.97%) WCAG
10 66 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
10 66 (0.94%) GRC
11 52 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 50 (0.71%) PMO
13 29 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 29 (0.41%) HIPAA
14 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
15 22 (0.31%) NIST 800
16 15 (0.21%) COBIT
16 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 864 (12.33%) Active Directory
2 742 (10.59%) Docker
3 189 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 133 (1.90%) Virtual Desktop
5 131 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
6 91 (1.30%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.87%) vSphere
8 50 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.41%) 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 (0.100%) Varnish
16 6 (0.086%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.071%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.071%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.057%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,147 (16.37%) Terraform
2 1,013 (14.46%) Kubernetes
3 380 (5.42%) Microsoft Intune
4 356 (5.08%) Ansible
5 215 (3.07%) Grafana
6 178 (2.54%) Prometheus
7 128 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
8 100 (1.43%) SCCM
9 51 (0.73%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.70%) Argo
11 44 (0.63%) Puppet
12 40 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
13 36 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 28 (0.40%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) Packer
18 18 (0.26%) HAProxy
19 16 (0.23%) SCOM
20 13 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,322 (33.15%) Microsoft
2 643 (9.18%) Databricks
3 360 (5.14%) ServiceNow
4 277 (3.95%) VMware
5 274 (3.91%) Oracle
6 270 (3.85%) Google
7 213 (3.04%) Cisco
8 197 (2.81%) SAP
9 165 (2.36%) OpenAI
10 159 (2.27%) Splunk
11 140 (2.00%) Palo Alto
12 136 (1.94%) CyberArk
13 132 (1.88%) Salesforce
14 117 (1.67%) Foundry
15 99 (1.41%) Dynatrace
16 91 (1.30%) Zscaler
17 70 (1.00%) Okta
18 68 (0.97%) Fortinet
18 68 (0.97%) Informatica
19 63 (0.90%) Red Hat