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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,792 3,937 5,187
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.47% 15.09% 13.88%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.21% 40.02% 42.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,776 2,726 3,806
10th Percentile £368 £350 £356
25th Percentile £434 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £635 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £530
% change year-on-year - -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 35 49
10th Percentile £24.60 £25.40 £17.80
25th Percentile £38.25 £28.20 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +16.88% -37.75%
75th Percentile £78.88 £76.72 £61.60
90th Percentile £101.18 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year -0.86% +50.65% -36.57%

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 15,363 9,838 12,169
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.98% 37.70% 32.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,344 6,633 8,684
10th Percentile £325 £310 £308
25th Percentile £415 £410 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -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 554 254 333
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.03 £14.13
25th Percentile £23.17 £17.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.53 £25.33 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +60.04% +15.11% -31.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £41.09 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.18 £67.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £28.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +33.93% +27.27% -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 3 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 3 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 3 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 3,559 £545 -0.95% 1,329
North of England +7 1,000 £503 +4.74% 633
South East +2 841 £515 +3.00% 706
Midlands +3 597 £500 +1.01% 344
North West +8 525 £500 +0.81% 349
West Midlands +1 445 £500 -4.76% 193
South West +7 434 £539 +7.21% 281
Yorkshire +3 395 £505 +6.37% 194
East of England +5 179 £550 - 199
East Midlands +4 141 £500 +8.11% 151
North East +2 93 £525 +5.00% 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
1 337 (4.96%) SharePoint
2 211 (3.11%) Confluence
3 170 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
4 164 (2.41%) Apache Spark
5 113 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
6 105 (1.55%) Apache
7 37 (0.54%) SAS
8 25 (0.37%) IIS
9 19 (0.28%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.21%) 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 (0.088%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.088%) Documentum
14 6 (0.088%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 100 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 66 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
3 63 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 27 (0.40%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.21%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.12%) Revit
10 7 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.074%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.074%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.059%) Notion
12 4 (0.059%) Trello
13 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 1 (0.015%) Houdini
14 1 (0.015%) InDesign
14 1 (0.015%) NUKE
14 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 94 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.21%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.10%) Maximo
7 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.088%) Endur
8 6 (0.088%) Magento
8 6 (0.088%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.088%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.088%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.088%) Shopify
8 6 (0.088%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.074%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.059%) Elite 3E
10 4 (0.059%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.059%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.059%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,404 (35.39%) AWS
2 1,371 (20.19%) Azure DevOps
3 1,132 (16.67%) GCP
4 873 (12.85%) Entra ID
5 856 (12.60%) Power Platform
6 685 (10.09%) Microsoft 365
7 603 (8.88%) GitHub
8 420 (6.18%) Azure Data Factory
9 367 (5.40%) GitHub Actions
10 317 (4.67%) Serverless
11 280 (4.12%) SaaS
12 277 (4.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 248 (3.65%) Azure AKS
14 226 (3.33%) Power Automate
15 223 (3.28%) Azure Monitor
16 213 (3.14%) PaaS
17 212 (3.12%) Dynamics 365
18 204 (3.00%) Snowflake
19 198 (2.92%) PowerApps
20 185 (2.72%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 423 (6.23%) Firewall
2 317 (4.67%) DNS
3 253 (3.72%) VPN
4 231 (3.40%) Network Security
5 190 (2.80%) WAN
6 167 (2.46%) DHCP
7 119 (1.75%) LAN
8 109 (1.60%) TCP/IP
9 99 (1.46%) BGP
9 99 (1.46%) SD-WAN
10 79 (1.16%) OSPF
11 71 (1.05%) VLAN
12 69 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
13 57 (0.84%) Kerberos
14 55 (0.81%) SSL
15 52 (0.77%) SAN
16 45 (0.66%) Wireless
17 42 (0.62%) VXLAN
18 41 (0.60%) IPsec
19 37 (0.54%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 592 (8.72%) Power BI
2 409 (6.02%) SQL Server
3 337 (4.96%) Data Warehouse
4 298 (4.39%) Data Lake
5 241 (3.55%) PostgreSQL
6 176 (2.59%) Azure SQL Database
6 176 (2.59%) NoSQL
7 157 (2.31%) Metadata
8 131 (1.93%) Delta Lake
9 113 (1.66%) Relational Database
10 91 (1.34%) Big Data
11 76 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 75 (1.10%) MongoDB
13 74 (1.09%) Tableau
14 64 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.84%) BigQuery
16 55 (0.81%) Oracle Database
17 51 (0.75%) MySQL
18 46 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
19 45 (0.66%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 489 (7.20%) Git
1 489 (7.20%) JIRA
2 318 (4.68%) Jenkins
3 246 (3.62%) GitLab
4 102 (1.50%) Selenium
5 58 (0.85%) JMeter
5 58 (0.85%) Postman
6 55 (0.81%) JUnit
7 51 (0.75%) Cucumber
8 43 (0.63%) REST Assured
9 41 (0.60%) SonarQube
10 39 (0.57%) MLflow
11 36 (0.53%) Visual Studio
12 35 (0.52%) WebDriver
13 31 (0.46%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.43%) Maven
15 26 (0.38%) Gatling
16 25 (0.37%) LoadRunner
16 25 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.32%) Gradle
General
1 1,705 (25.10%) Social Skills
2 1,337 (19.68%) Finance
3 700 (10.31%) Public Sector
4 647 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
5 390 (5.74%) Banking
6 192 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
7 159 (2.34%) Legal
8 157 (2.31%) Retail
9 156 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 91 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
11 72 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
12 68 (1.00%) Investment Banking
13 67 (0.99%) Front Office
14 63 (0.93%) Financial Institution
14 63 (0.93%) Law
15 58 (0.85%) Telecoms
16 57 (0.84%) Manufacturing
16 57 (0.84%) Marketing
17 54 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
18 44 (0.65%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,210 (17.82%) Architect
2 841 (12.38%) Senior
3 813 (11.97%) Developer
4 588 (8.66%) Azure Engineer
5 532 (7.83%) Lead
6 530 (7.80%) Data Engineer
7 416 (6.12%) Analyst
8 358 (5.27%) Solutions Architect
9 322 (4.74%) DevOps Engineer
10 283 (4.17%) Consultant
11 272 (4.00%) Cloud Engineer
12 238 (3.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 194 (2.86%) Data Architect
14 184 (2.71%) Azure Architect
15 173 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
16 170 (2.50%) Security Engineer
17 162 (2.39%) Technical Architect
18 158 (2.33%) Business Analyst
19 147 (2.16%) Senior Developer
20 145 (2.13%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 519 (7.64%) .NET
2 450 (6.63%) REST
3 264 (3.89%) React
4 256 (3.77%) Kafka
5 223 (3.28%) PySpark
6 213 (3.14%) RESTful
7 204 (3.00%) OAuth
8 174 (2.56%) Spring
9 170 (2.50%) Node.js
10 158 (2.33%) AngularJS
11 144 (2.12%) Spring Boot
12 139 (2.05%) JSON
12 139 (2.05%) SAML
13 135 (1.99%) LDAP
14 125 (1.84%) OpenID
15 115 (1.69%) HTML
16 113 (1.66%) .NET Framework
17 109 (1.60%) Middleware
17 109 (1.60%) SOAP
18 103 (1.52%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 732 (10.78%) Cloud Native
2 295 (4.34%) Onboarding
3 260 (3.83%) Product Ownership
4 216 (3.18%) Data Centre
5 207 (3.05%) Distributed Systems
5 207 (3.05%) Hybrid Cloud
6 190 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
7 154 (2.27%) AI Agents
8 151 (2.22%) Security Posture
9 137 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
10 133 (1.96%) Public Cloud
11 101 (1.49%) Data Structures
12 92 (1.35%) Management Information System
13 91 (1.34%) Replication
14 86 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
15 75 (1.10%) PKI
16 74 (1.09%) Enterprise Cloud
17 70 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
18 63 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
19 56 (0.82%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 810 (11.93%) Windows
2 346 (5.09%) Linux
3 257 (3.78%) Windows Server
4 101 (1.49%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.09%) Unix
6 62 (0.91%) Mac OS
6 62 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 59 (0.87%) Apple iOS
8 57 (0.84%) Android
9 46 (0.68%) VMS
10 36 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 6 (0.088%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.088%) Rocky
17 6 (0.088%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,469 (36.35%) DevOps
2 2,085 (30.70%) CI/CD
3 1,633 (24.04%) Agile
4 1,074 (15.81%) AI
5 1,022 (15.05%) Infrastructure as Code
6 988 (14.55%) Analytics
7 981 (14.44%) Migration
8 932 (13.72%) Problem-Solving
9 827 (12.18%) Stakeholder Management
10 759 (11.17%) Data Modelling
11 684 (10.07%) Continuous Improvement
12 670 (9.86%) Data Pipeline
13 665 (9.79%) Roadmaps
14 636 (9.36%) Business Intelligence
15 617 (9.08%) Containerisation
16 600 (8.83%) ETL
17 584 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 582 (8.57%) Microservices
19 569 (8.38%) Data Engineering
20 519 (7.64%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,614 (23.76%) Python
2 1,395 (20.54%) SQL
3 685 (10.09%) PowerShell
4 564 (8.30%) Java
5 531 (7.82%) C#
6 370 (5.45%) JavaScript
7 249 (3.67%) Bash
7 249 (3.67%) TypeScript
8 233 (3.43%) Bicep
9 87 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 80 (1.18%) T-SQL
11 73 (1.07%) Go
12 69 (1.02%) Scala
13 43 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
14 36 (0.53%) R
15 34 (0.50%) Shell Script
16 30 (0.44%) Kotlin
17 28 (0.41%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) C++
18 21 (0.31%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,673 (24.63%) Security Cleared
2 1,377 (20.27%) SC Cleared
3 506 (7.45%) Degree
4 359 (5.29%) Azure Certification
5 219 (3.22%) CISSP
6 189 (2.78%) DV Cleared
7 178 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
8 173 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
9 171 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
10 158 (2.33%) AWS Certification
11 136 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
12 105 (1.55%) CISM
13 83 (1.22%) CCNP
14 68 (1.00%) PMP
15 64 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 63 (0.93%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.77%) Master's Degree
18 49 (0.72%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 473 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 351 (5.17%) QA
3 304 (4.48%) GDPR
4 253 (3.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 241 (3.55%) NIST
6 138 (2.03%) Accessibility
7 92 (1.35%) NCSC
8 87 (1.28%) SLA
9 74 (1.09%) PCI DSS
10 69 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 57 (0.84%) WCAG
13 55 (0.81%) GRC
14 38 (0.56%) PMO
15 35 (0.52%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.35%) SOC 2
18 22 (0.32%) NIST 800
19 17 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
20 16 (0.24%) COBIT
System Software
1 853 (12.56%) Active Directory
2 705 (10.38%) Docker
3 190 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 127 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
5 126 (1.86%) Virtual Desktop
6 89 (1.31%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.87%) vSphere
8 50 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.41%) Firmware
11 22 (0.32%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) IAG
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.088%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.074%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
17 5 (0.074%) KVM
17 5 (0.074%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,103 (16.24%) Terraform
2 957 (14.09%) Kubernetes
3 376 (5.54%) Microsoft Intune
4 318 (4.68%) Ansible
5 189 (2.78%) Grafana
6 155 (2.28%) Prometheus
7 146 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
8 95 (1.40%) SCCM
9 68 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 41 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
11 40 (0.59%) Argo
11 40 (0.59%) Progress Chef
12 37 (0.54%) Puppet
13 34 (0.50%) FortiGate
14 28 (0.41%) Istio
15 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.28%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.24%) HP ALM
17 16 (0.24%) Packer
18 13 (0.19%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,209 (32.52%) Microsoft
2 636 (9.36%) Databricks
3 337 (4.96%) ServiceNow
4 265 (3.90%) Oracle
5 261 (3.84%) VMware
6 247 (3.64%) Google
7 196 (2.89%) SAP
8 188 (2.77%) Cisco
9 167 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 134 (1.97%) Splunk
11 128 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 127 (1.87%) Palo Alto
13 125 (1.84%) CyberArk
14 118 (1.74%) Foundry
15 91 (1.34%) Okta
16 88 (1.30%) Dynatrace
17 74 (1.09%) Zscaler
18 68 (1.00%) Informatica
19 63 (0.93%) Citrix
20 61 (0.90%) Fortinet