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 5 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,114 4,079 4,854
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.66% 14.77% 14.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.69% 39.71% 42.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,979 2,834 3,548
10th Percentile £373 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £420 £450
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 £738 £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 31
10th Percentile £19.50 £20.30 £17.80
25th Percentile £28.50 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -37.78%
75th Percentile £79.50 £76.25 £55.25
90th Percentile £100.68 £100.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £43.23 £35.00
% change year-on-year +27.24% +23.50% -39.13%

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 15,920 10,273 11,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.05% 37.21% 33.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,616 6,977 8,026
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £421 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 566 266 238
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.02 £18.13 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.24 £25.15 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +48.07% +5.67% -29.79%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £53.56
90th Percentile £83.75 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £27.40 £24.15
% change year-on-year +29.56% +13.46% -31.00%

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 5 August 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 5 August 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 5 August 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 3,723 £550 - 2,063
North of England +8 1,021 £500 +5.26% 851
South East +2 912 £525 +5.00% 809
Midlands +4 654 £493 -1.50% 408
North West +8 537 £500 +5.26% 479
West Midlands +3 495 £493 -6.19% 255
South West +7 438 £539 +7.75% 344
Yorkshire +5 404 £500 +5.26% 265
East of England +4 182 £525 -4.55% 228
East Midlands +10 147 £488 +5.41% 152
North East +6 93 £520 +4.00% 118
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
1 380 (5.34%) SharePoint
2 245 (3.44%) Confluence
3 181 (2.54%) Microsoft Exchange
4 159 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 131 (1.84%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.53%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 16 (0.22%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.098%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.084%) Documentum
16 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
16 6 (0.084%) Jupyter
16 6 (0.084%) Mendix
Applications
1 106 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
3 65 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
4 31 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.42%) Chatbot
6 26 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
10 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
11 8 (0.11%) Revit
12 5 (0.070%) Notion
13 3 (0.042%) Adobe XD
13 3 (0.042%) Houdini
13 3 (0.042%) NUKE
14 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
15 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
15 1 (0.014%) InDesign
15 1 (0.014%) SOLIDWORKS
15 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 103 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Maximo
5 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.098%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.098%) Shopify
7 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
7 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
8 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
8 4 (0.056%) Endur
8 4 (0.056%) Quorum
8 4 (0.056%) Ripple
8 4 (0.056%) SAP MM
8 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
8 4 (0.056%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,492 (35.03%) AWS
2 1,503 (21.13%) Azure DevOps
3 1,190 (16.73%) GCP
4 932 (13.10%) Entra ID
5 894 (12.57%) Power Platform
6 728 (10.23%) Microsoft 365
7 679 (9.54%) GitHub
8 433 (6.09%) Azure Data Factory
9 410 (5.76%) GitHub Actions
10 307 (4.32%) Serverless
11 295 (4.15%) SaaS
12 287 (4.03%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 256 (3.60%) Azure AKS
14 254 (3.57%) Power Automate
15 251 (3.53%) Azure Monitor
16 235 (3.30%) Dynamics 365
17 224 (3.15%) PaaS
17 224 (3.15%) PowerApps
18 215 (3.02%) Snowflake
19 197 (2.77%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 476 (6.69%) Firewall
2 354 (4.98%) DNS
3 292 (4.10%) VPN
4 262 (3.68%) Network Security
5 184 (2.59%) DHCP
6 183 (2.57%) WAN
7 158 (2.22%) TCP/IP
8 112 (1.57%) LAN
9 110 (1.55%) BGP
10 91 (1.28%) SD-WAN
11 90 (1.27%) OSPF
12 87 (1.22%) VLAN
13 72 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.86%) SSL
15 58 (0.82%) SAN
16 54 (0.76%) Wireless
17 44 (0.62%) VXLAN
18 42 (0.59%) IPsec
19 39 (0.55%) HTTP
19 39 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 640 (9.00%) Power BI
2 423 (5.95%) SQL Server
3 366 (5.14%) Data Warehouse
4 306 (4.30%) Data Lake
5 248 (3.49%) PostgreSQL
6 186 (2.61%) NoSQL
7 178 (2.50%) Metadata
8 177 (2.49%) Azure SQL Database
9 127 (1.79%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.63%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.25%) Big Data
12 88 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 71 (1.00%) MongoDB
14 62 (0.87%) Tableau
15 60 (0.84%) MySQL
15 60 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
16 58 (0.82%) BigQuery
17 52 (0.73%) Oracle Database
18 51 (0.72%) Star Schema
19 50 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 553 (7.77%) Git
2 534 (7.51%) JIRA
3 355 (4.99%) Jenkins
4 277 (3.89%) GitLab
5 106 (1.49%) Selenium
6 59 (0.83%) JUnit
7 52 (0.73%) Postman
8 51 (0.72%) JMeter
9 50 (0.70%) Cucumber
10 49 (0.69%) SonarQube
11 46 (0.65%) Cypress.io
12 41 (0.58%) Maven
13 40 (0.56%) WebDriver
14 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
14 34 (0.48%) Visual Studio
15 31 (0.44%) Gradle
15 31 (0.44%) MLflow
16 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
17 26 (0.37%) Gatling
18 25 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,824 (25.64%) Social Skills
2 1,397 (19.64%) Finance
3 773 (10.87%) Public Sector
4 708 (9.95%) Analytical Skills
5 404 (5.68%) Banking
6 191 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
7 183 (2.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 180 (2.53%) Retail
9 150 (2.11%) Legal
10 85 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
11 82 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 79 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
13 75 (1.05%) Manufacturing
14 70 (0.98%) Law
15 67 (0.94%) Financial Institution
16 66 (0.93%) Investment Banking
17 65 (0.91%) Aerospace
17 65 (0.91%) Marketing
18 62 (0.87%) Front Office
19 55 (0.77%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,270 (17.85%) Architect
2 914 (12.85%) Senior
3 843 (11.85%) Developer
4 620 (8.72%) Azure Engineer
5 590 (8.29%) Lead
6 551 (7.75%) Data Engineer
7 430 (6.04%) Analyst
8 402 (5.65%) Solutions Architect
9 332 (4.67%) DevOps Engineer
10 313 (4.40%) Cloud Engineer
11 278 (3.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 270 (3.80%) Consultant
13 213 (2.99%) Data Architect
14 189 (2.66%) Platform Engineer
15 179 (2.52%) Azure Architect
16 176 (2.47%) Security Engineer
17 167 (2.35%) Project Manager
18 159 (2.24%) Business Analyst
18 159 (2.24%) Senior Developer
19 156 (2.19%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 544 (7.65%) .NET
2 497 (6.99%) REST
3 275 (3.87%) Kafka
4 262 (3.68%) React
5 230 (3.23%) PySpark
5 230 (3.23%) RESTful
6 211 (2.97%) OAuth
7 169 (2.38%) JSON
8 157 (2.21%) Spring
9 154 (2.16%) AngularJS
9 154 (2.16%) Node.js
10 137 (1.93%) SAML
11 132 (1.86%) OpenID
12 126 (1.77%) .NET Framework
13 123 (1.73%) Spring Boot
14 122 (1.71%) HTML
15 117 (1.64%) OAuth2
16 116 (1.63%) Middleware
17 110 (1.55%) SOAP
18 102 (1.43%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 760 (10.68%) Cloud Native
2 348 (4.89%) Onboarding
3 297 (4.17%) Product Ownership
4 239 (3.36%) Hybrid Cloud
5 234 (3.29%) Distributed Systems
6 220 (3.09%) Data Centre
7 205 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
8 204 (2.87%) AI Agents
9 172 (2.42%) Enterprise Software
10 163 (2.29%) Security Posture
11 130 (1.83%) Data Structures
12 121 (1.70%) Public Cloud
13 118 (1.66%) Management Information System
14 96 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
15 91 (1.28%) PKI
16 90 (1.27%) Enterprise Cloud
17 76 (1.07%) Replication
17 76 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
18 68 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
19 60 (0.84%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 854 (12.00%) Windows
2 415 (5.83%) Linux
3 287 (4.03%) Windows Server
4 116 (1.63%) Windows 10
5 77 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 75 (1.05%) Unix
7 68 (0.96%) Android
8 65 (0.91%) Mac OS
9 61 (0.86%) Apple iOS
10 48 (0.67%) Ubuntu
11 44 (0.62%) VMS
12 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) CentOS
14 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 10 (0.14%) Debian
16 6 (0.084%) AIX
16 6 (0.084%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.070%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,596 (36.49%) DevOps
2 2,175 (30.57%) CI/CD
3 1,778 (24.99%) Agile
4 1,141 (16.04%) AI
5 1,109 (15.59%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,039 (14.61%) Migration
7 1,038 (14.59%) Analytics
8 1,033 (14.52%) Stakeholder Management
9 962 (13.52%) Problem-Solving
10 811 (11.40%) Data Modelling
11 778 (10.94%) Continuous Improvement
12 710 (9.98%) Data Pipeline
13 692 (9.73%) Business Intelligence
14 688 (9.67%) Roadmaps
15 687 (9.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 640 (9.00%) Containerisation
17 608 (8.55%) ETL
18 595 (8.36%) Microservices
19 590 (8.29%) Data Engineering
20 567 (7.97%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,655 (23.26%) Python
2 1,420 (19.96%) SQL
3 754 (10.60%) PowerShell
4 571 (8.03%) Java
5 537 (7.55%) C#
6 412 (5.79%) JavaScript
7 326 (4.58%) Bash
8 287 (4.03%) Bicep
9 247 (3.47%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 83 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 61 (0.86%) Go
13 50 (0.70%) Scala
14 46 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
15 43 (0.60%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 33 (0.46%) R
18 29 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 28 (0.39%) Groovy
20 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,812 (25.47%) Security Cleared
2 1,465 (20.59%) SC Cleared
3 526 (7.39%) Degree
4 390 (5.48%) Azure Certification
5 238 (3.35%) DV Cleared
6 228 (3.20%) CISSP
7 202 (2.84%) Microsoft Certification
8 187 (2.63%) Cisco Certification
9 177 (2.49%) AWS Certification
10 171 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
11 153 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
12 108 (1.52%) CISM
13 90 (1.27%) CCNP
14 71 (1.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 71 (1.00%) PMP
15 69 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 52 (0.73%) Master's Degree
17 51 (0.72%) ISTQB
18 50 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
19 45 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 499 (7.01%) Data Quality
2 376 (5.29%) QA
3 285 (4.01%) GDPR
4 261 (3.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 259 (3.64%) NIST
6 169 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.35%) NCSC
8 94 (1.32%) SLA
9 71 (1.00%) WCAG
10 70 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
11 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
12 67 (0.94%) GRC
13 54 (0.76%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 51 (0.72%) PMO
15 33 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 28 (0.39%) HIPAA
17 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.30%) NIST 800
19 16 (0.22%) COBIT
20 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 890 (12.51%) Active Directory
2 762 (10.71%) Docker
3 195 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.91%) Virtual Machines
5 134 (1.88%) Virtual Desktop
6 98 (1.38%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.87%) vSphere
8 52 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.51%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.42%) Firmware
11 23 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.22%) Postfix
13 14 (0.20%) IAG
14 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.098%) Varnish
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.070%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.056%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,170 (16.45%) Terraform
2 1,038 (14.59%) Kubernetes
3 387 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 378 (5.31%) Ansible
5 215 (3.02%) Grafana
6 177 (2.49%) Prometheus
7 125 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
8 103 (1.45%) SCCM
9 55 (0.77%) Progress Chef
10 50 (0.70%) Argo
11 45 (0.63%) Puppet
12 39 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 26 (0.37%) Istio
16 21 (0.30%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) Packer
18 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 18 (0.25%) SCOM
19 12 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,398 (33.71%) Microsoft
2 670 (9.42%) Databricks
3 361 (5.07%) ServiceNow
4 286 (4.02%) VMware
5 282 (3.96%) Google
6 277 (3.89%) Oracle
7 215 (3.02%) Cisco
8 194 (2.73%) SAP
9 161 (2.26%) OpenAI
10 160 (2.25%) Splunk
11 143 (2.01%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.97%) CyberArk
13 132 (1.86%) Salesforce
14 118 (1.66%) Foundry
15 102 (1.43%) Dynatrace
16 92 (1.29%) Zscaler
17 69 (0.97%) Fortinet
17 69 (0.97%) Okta
18 66 (0.93%) Informatica
18 66 (0.93%) Red Hat