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 12 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,542 3,753 5,096
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.34% 15.31% 13.60%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.80% 40.65% 42.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,655 2,629 3,753
10th Percentile £365 £350 £355
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -2.68%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £742
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 148 26 46
10th Percentile £25.38 £25.73 £17.80
25th Percentile £44.66 £27.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +40.71% -44.44%
75th Percentile £76.94 £77.42 £61.19
90th Percentile £101.34 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £35.00
% change year-on-year +16.75% +40.71% -43.41%

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 14,936 9,233 11,994
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.02% 37.66% 32.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,137 6,286 8,600
10th Percentile £325 £311 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £748
UK median daily rate £510 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +1.59% -4.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 521 225 329
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £41.06 £25.50 £21.46
Median % change year-on-year +61.02% +18.83% -38.69%
75th Percentile £68.75 £38.75 £40.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £72.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.12 £28.55 £21.50
% change year-on-year +30.02% +32.79% -39.65%

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 12 June 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 12 June 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 12 June 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 3,488 £540 -1.82% 795
North of England +5 939 £500 +5.26% 448
South East +3 834 £505 +1.00% 591
Midlands +1 529 £500 - 267
North West +4 472 £500 +5.26% 256
South West +5 415 £538 +4.88% 238
West Midlands +1 391 £500 -4.76% 174
Yorkshire +9 386 £500 +5.26% 116
East of England +6 156 £550 -5.17% 169
East Midlands +4 128 £475 +2.70% 93
North East +2 93 £525 +5.00% 77
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
1 323 (4.94%) SharePoint
2 186 (2.84%) Confluence
3 170 (2.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 167 (2.55%) Apache Spark
5 106 (1.62%) Apache Airflow
6 97 (1.48%) Apache
7 33 (0.50%) SAS
8 25 (0.38%) IIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.17%) Appian
11 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
13 9 (0.14%) Mendix
14 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 89 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 24 (0.37%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.11%) Revit
9 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.076%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.061%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.061%) Notion
11 4 (0.061%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.015%) InDesign
13 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.015%) Sketch
13 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 93 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
3 21 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.17%) Maximo
6 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.11%) Shopify
9 6 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.092%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.092%) SimCorp Dimension
9 6 (0.092%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.076%) Endur
10 5 (0.076%) NEC Housing
10 5 (0.076%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.076%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 4 (0.061%) Magento
11 4 (0.061%) Oracle FAH
11 4 (0.061%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,260 (34.55%) AWS
2 1,323 (20.22%) Azure DevOps
3 1,101 (16.83%) GCP
4 839 (12.82%) Power Platform
5 829 (12.67%) Entra ID
6 679 (10.38%) Microsoft 365
7 587 (8.97%) GitHub
8 440 (6.73%) Azure Data Factory
9 348 (5.32%) GitHub Actions
10 320 (4.89%) Serverless
11 278 (4.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 266 (4.07%) SaaS
13 240 (3.67%) Azure AKS
14 219 (3.35%) Power Automate
15 218 (3.33%) Dynamics 365
16 212 (3.24%) PaaS
17 204 (3.12%) Azure Monitor
18 186 (2.84%) Snowflake
19 180 (2.75%) PowerApps
20 171 (2.61%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 395 (6.04%) Firewall
2 300 (4.59%) DNS
3 228 (3.49%) VPN
4 217 (3.32%) Network Security
5 188 (2.87%) WAN
6 162 (2.48%) DHCP
7 115 (1.76%) LAN
8 97 (1.48%) SD-WAN
9 94 (1.44%) TCP/IP
10 83 (1.27%) BGP
11 74 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
12 66 (1.01%) OSPF
12 66 (1.01%) VLAN
13 61 (0.93%) Kerberos
14 49 (0.75%) SAN
15 45 (0.69%) SSL
16 44 (0.67%) VXLAN
17 42 (0.64%) Wireless
18 33 (0.50%) Internet
19 31 (0.47%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 577 (8.82%) Power BI
2 396 (6.05%) SQL Server
3 331 (5.06%) Data Warehouse
4 319 (4.88%) Data Lake
5 222 (3.39%) PostgreSQL
6 188 (2.87%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 146 (2.23%) Metadata
9 134 (2.05%) Delta Lake
10 101 (1.54%) Relational Database
11 87 (1.33%) Big Data
11 87 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 74 (1.13%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.12%) Tableau
14 61 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (0.84%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.83%) Oracle Database
17 46 (0.70%) Spark SQL
18 45 (0.69%) MySQL
19 44 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 468 (7.15%) Git
2 452 (6.91%) JIRA
3 295 (4.51%) Jenkins
4 250 (3.82%) GitLab
5 101 (1.54%) Selenium
6 58 (0.89%) Postman
7 55 (0.84%) JMeter
8 52 (0.79%) Cucumber
9 51 (0.78%) JUnit
10 45 (0.69%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.63%) MLflow
12 38 (0.58%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.49%) Visual Studio
13 32 (0.49%) WebDriver
14 28 (0.43%) Maven
15 27 (0.41%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.41%) Cypress.io
16 26 (0.40%) Gatling
17 23 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
18 21 (0.32%) Gradle
General
1 1,666 (25.47%) Social Skills
2 1,277 (19.52%) Finance
3 649 (9.92%) Public Sector
4 597 (9.13%) Analytical Skills
5 373 (5.70%) Banking
6 194 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
7 148 (2.26%) Legal
8 131 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 123 (1.88%) Retail
10 84 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
11 68 (1.04%) Investment Banking
12 65 (0.99%) Law
13 63 (0.96%) Financial Institution
13 63 (0.96%) Front Office
13 63 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
14 57 (0.87%) Marketing
15 55 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
16 50 (0.76%) Telecoms
17 40 (0.61%) Manufacturing
17 40 (0.61%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,135 (17.35%) Architect
2 809 (12.37%) Senior
3 771 (11.79%) Developer
4 583 (8.91%) Azure Engineer
5 521 (7.96%) Data Engineer
6 499 (7.63%) Lead
7 402 (6.14%) Analyst
8 329 (5.03%) DevOps Engineer
9 324 (4.95%) Solutions Architect
10 269 (4.11%) Consultant
11 247 (3.78%) Cloud Engineer
12 234 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 177 (2.71%) Azure Architect
14 176 (2.69%) Data Architect
15 175 (2.68%) Security Engineer
16 168 (2.57%) Platform Engineer
17 150 (2.29%) Business Analyst
18 147 (2.25%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 147 (2.25%) Technical Architect
19 146 (2.23%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 502 (7.67%) .NET
2 447 (6.83%) REST
3 267 (4.08%) React
4 243 (3.71%) Kafka
5 221 (3.38%) PySpark
6 199 (3.04%) RESTful
7 195 (2.98%) OAuth
8 173 (2.64%) Node.js
9 168 (2.57%) LDAP
10 164 (2.51%) Spring
11 158 (2.42%) AngularJS
12 134 (2.05%) SAML
12 134 (2.05%) Spring Boot
13 131 (2.00%) JSON
14 127 (1.94%) SOAP
15 125 (1.91%) OpenID
16 120 (1.83%) Middleware
17 116 (1.77%) HTML
18 102 (1.56%) .NET Framework
19 99 (1.51%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 674 (10.30%) Cloud Native
2 279 (4.26%) Onboarding
3 240 (3.67%) Product Ownership
4 205 (3.13%) Data Centre
5 193 (2.95%) Hybrid Cloud
6 172 (2.63%) Distributed Systems
7 170 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
8 158 (2.42%) Security Posture
9 153 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
10 139 (2.12%) Public Cloud
11 138 (2.11%) AI Agents
12 93 (1.42%) Data Structures
13 84 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
14 81 (1.24%) Replication
15 76 (1.16%) Management Information System
16 65 (0.99%) Enterprise Cloud
16 65 (0.99%) PKI
16 65 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
17 59 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
18 57 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 767 (11.72%) Windows
2 322 (4.92%) Linux
3 237 (3.62%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.01%) Unix
6 65 (0.99%) Apple iOS
7 63 (0.96%) Mac OS
8 55 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 54 (0.83%) Android
10 52 (0.79%) VMS
11 30 (0.46%) Ubuntu
12 26 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
13 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.18%) CentOS
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 10 (0.15%) Debian
16 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.092%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,403 (36.73%) DevOps
2 2,003 (30.62%) CI/CD
3 1,509 (23.07%) Agile
4 993 (15.18%) AI
5 967 (14.78%) Infrastructure as Code
6 955 (14.60%) Analytics
7 934 (14.28%) Migration
8 926 (14.15%) Problem-Solving
9 732 (11.19%) Stakeholder Management
10 730 (11.16%) Data Modelling
11 645 (9.86%) Data Pipeline
12 632 (9.66%) Continuous Improvement
13 629 (9.61%) Business Intelligence
14 617 (9.43%) ETL
15 610 (9.32%) Roadmaps
16 576 (8.80%) Containerisation
17 560 (8.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 554 (8.47%) Microservices
19 536 (8.19%) Data Engineering
20 490 (7.49%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,543 (23.59%) Python
2 1,373 (20.99%) SQL
3 688 (10.52%) PowerShell
4 540 (8.25%) Java
5 528 (8.07%) C#
6 362 (5.53%) JavaScript
7 233 (3.56%) TypeScript
8 221 (3.38%) Bash
9 208 (3.18%) Bicep
10 88 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 78 (1.19%) T-SQL
12 75 (1.15%) Scala
13 69 (1.05%) Go
14 41 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
15 34 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 33 (0.50%) R
17 32 (0.49%) PL/SQL
18 26 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 21 (0.32%) C++
20 14 (0.21%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,644 (25.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,381 (21.11%) SC Cleared
3 466 (7.12%) Degree
4 358 (5.47%) Azure Certification
5 203 (3.10%) CISSP
6 171 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
7 163 (2.49%) DV Cleared
8 157 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
8 157 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 146 (2.23%) AWS Certification
10 124 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
11 109 (1.67%) CISM
12 72 (1.10%) CCNP
13 70 (1.07%) PMP
14 63 (0.96%) PMI Certification
15 60 (0.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 48 (0.73%) ISTQB
17 44 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
18 43 (0.66%) Master's Degree
19 40 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 457 (6.99%) Data Quality
2 329 (5.03%) QA
3 299 (4.57%) GDPR
4 251 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 241 (3.68%) NIST
6 115 (1.76%) Accessibility
7 89 (1.36%) NCSC
8 86 (1.31%) SLA
9 76 (1.16%) PCI DSS
10 65 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 51 (0.78%) GRC
13 48 (0.73%) WCAG
14 40 (0.61%) PMO
15 35 (0.54%) HIPAA
16 27 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 25 (0.38%) NIST 800
18 22 (0.34%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.24%) ISO 20022
20 15 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 844 (12.90%) Active Directory
2 672 (10.27%) Docker
3 192 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 123 (1.88%) Virtual Desktop
5 110 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 96 (1.47%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.96%) vSphere
8 53 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.41%) Firmware
10 26 (0.40%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.26%) Postfix
13 10 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.11%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.092%) KVM
16 6 (0.092%) RACF
17 5 (0.076%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
17 5 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,035 (15.82%) Terraform
2 904 (13.82%) Kubernetes
3 362 (5.53%) Microsoft Intune
4 298 (4.56%) Ansible
5 178 (2.72%) Grafana
6 153 (2.34%) Prometheus
7 142 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
8 94 (1.44%) SCCM
9 73 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
11 37 (0.57%) Progress Chef
12 35 (0.54%) Argo
12 35 (0.54%) Puppet
13 32 (0.49%) Istio
14 30 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 24 (0.37%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.24%) Packer
18 15 (0.23%) linkerd
19 14 (0.21%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,129 (32.54%) Microsoft
2 634 (9.69%) Databricks
3 305 (4.66%) ServiceNow
4 265 (4.05%) VMware
5 252 (3.85%) Oracle
6 232 (3.55%) Google
7 185 (2.83%) SAP
8 178 (2.72%) Cisco
9 162 (2.48%) OpenAI
10 136 (2.08%) CyberArk
11 135 (2.06%) Splunk
12 125 (1.91%) Palo Alto
13 111 (1.70%) Salesforce
14 109 (1.67%) Foundry
15 85 (1.30%) Okta
16 77 (1.18%) Dynatrace
17 65 (0.99%) Zscaler
18 64 (0.98%) Informatica
19 61 (0.93%) Citrix
20 60 (0.92%) Red Hat