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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,681 3,814 5,138
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.39% 15.19% 13.72%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.89% 40.11% 42.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,723 2,656 3,772
10th Percentile £367 £350 £357
25th Percentile £431 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year - -3.23% -2.86%
75th Percentile £631 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 30 50
10th Percentile £25.38 £24.14 £17.80
25th Percentile £50.14 £27.80 £22.91
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +17.62% -41.67%
75th Percentile £80.00 £76.96 £61.19
90th Percentile £101.67 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £36.75
% change year-on-year +16.75% +34.01% -40.58%

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 15,223 9,508 12,087
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.06% 37.88% 32.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,307 6,455 8,632
10th Percentile £325 £310 £306
25th Percentile £413 £413 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.14% -4.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 544 241 339
10th Percentile £16.62 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.20 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.09 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.34% +14.32% -31.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £40.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.60 £67.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £28.25 £22.00
% change year-on-year +32.74% +28.41% -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 25 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 25 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 25 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 3,522 £540 -1.82% 844
North of England +7 961 £508 +6.84% 473
South East +2 842 £513 +2.50% 588
Midlands +3 566 £500 +1.01% 251
North West +8 497 £500 - 266
South West +6 432 £528 +2.18% 232
West Midlands +1 421 £500 -4.76% 151
Yorkshire +5 384 £505 +6.37% 134
East of England +4 174 £550 -4.76% 177
East Midlands +4 135 £500 +9.59% 100
North East +5 92 £525 +5.00% 80
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
1 325 (4.86%) SharePoint
2 195 (2.92%) Confluence
3 166 (2.48%) Apache Spark
3 166 (2.48%) Microsoft Exchange
4 111 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
5 101 (1.51%) Apache
6 36 (0.54%) SAS
7 25 (0.37%) IIS
8 18 (0.27%) CMS
9 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
10 12 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 10 (0.15%) Camunda
12 9 (0.13%) Appian
12 9 (0.13%) Mendix
13 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.12%) HCL Notes
13 8 (0.12%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 5 (0.075%) Jupyter
Applications
1 96 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 26 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.12%) Revit
10 7 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.075%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.060%) Notion
12 4 (0.060%) Trello
13 2 (0.030%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.015%) InDesign
14 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.015%) Sketch
14 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 96 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.19%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Maximo
6 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.10%) Shopify
8 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.090%) Endur
9 6 (0.090%) Oracle EBS
9 6 (0.090%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.090%) SimCorp Dimension
9 6 (0.090%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.075%) Magento
10 5 (0.075%) SAP MM
11 4 (0.060%) R3 Corda
11 4 (0.060%) Remedy AR System
11 4 (0.060%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,344 (35.08%) AWS
2 1,353 (20.25%) Azure DevOps
3 1,128 (16.88%) GCP
4 857 (12.83%) Entra ID
5 853 (12.77%) Power Platform
6 670 (10.03%) Microsoft 365
7 584 (8.74%) GitHub
8 430 (6.44%) Azure Data Factory
9 352 (5.27%) GitHub Actions
10 323 (4.83%) Serverless
11 281 (4.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 276 (4.13%) SaaS
13 248 (3.71%) Azure AKS
14 224 (3.35%) Power Automate
15 217 (3.25%) Dynamics 365
16 215 (3.22%) Azure Monitor
17 211 (3.16%) PaaS
18 197 (2.95%) Snowflake
19 190 (2.84%) PowerApps
20 184 (2.75%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 415 (6.21%) Firewall
2 306 (4.58%) DNS
3 245 (3.67%) VPN
4 228 (3.41%) Network Security
5 192 (2.87%) WAN
6 163 (2.44%) DHCP
7 118 (1.77%) LAN
8 104 (1.56%) TCP/IP
9 100 (1.50%) SD-WAN
10 93 (1.39%) BGP
11 73 (1.09%) OSPF
12 72 (1.08%) VLAN
13 71 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
14 58 (0.87%) Kerberos
15 49 (0.73%) SAN
16 47 (0.70%) SSL
17 43 (0.64%) Wireless
18 42 (0.63%) VXLAN
19 37 (0.55%) Internet
20 36 (0.54%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 592 (8.86%) Power BI
2 392 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 336 (5.03%) Data Warehouse
4 310 (4.64%) Data Lake
5 234 (3.50%) PostgreSQL
6 184 (2.75%) Azure SQL Database
7 171 (2.56%) NoSQL
8 158 (2.36%) Metadata
9 132 (1.98%) Delta Lake
10 113 (1.69%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.35%) Big Data
12 78 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.11%) Tableau
14 71 (1.06%) MongoDB
15 63 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
16 56 (0.84%) Oracle Database
17 54 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
19 45 (0.67%) Star Schema
20 43 (0.64%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 475 (7.11%) Git
1 475 (7.11%) JIRA
2 305 (4.57%) Jenkins
3 246 (3.68%) GitLab
4 102 (1.53%) Selenium
5 58 (0.87%) Postman
6 57 (0.85%) JMeter
7 52 (0.78%) JUnit
8 51 (0.76%) Cucumber
9 43 (0.64%) REST Assured
10 41 (0.61%) SonarQube
11 39 (0.58%) MLflow
12 36 (0.54%) Visual Studio
13 35 (0.52%) WebDriver
14 30 (0.45%) Cypress.io
15 29 (0.43%) Maven
16 26 (0.39%) Gatling
17 25 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
18 23 (0.34%) Gradle
19 22 (0.33%) LoadRunner
General
1 1,687 (25.25%) Social Skills
2 1,325 (19.83%) Finance
3 681 (10.19%) Public Sector
4 620 (9.28%) Analytical Skills
5 390 (5.84%) Banking
6 191 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 155 (2.32%) Legal
8 154 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 144 (2.16%) Retail
10 88 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 67 (1.00%) Investment Banking
13 65 (0.97%) Financial Institution
14 64 (0.96%) Front Office
14 64 (0.96%) Law
15 56 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
16 55 (0.82%) Telecoms
17 54 (0.81%) Marketing
18 53 (0.79%) Manufacturing
19 42 (0.63%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,189 (17.80%) Architect
2 829 (12.41%) Senior
3 796 (11.91%) Developer
4 589 (8.82%) Azure Engineer
5 525 (7.86%) Data Engineer
6 513 (7.68%) Lead
7 408 (6.11%) Analyst
8 343 (5.13%) Solutions Architect
9 323 (4.83%) DevOps Engineer
10 280 (4.19%) Consultant
11 268 (4.01%) Cloud Engineer
12 236 (3.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 188 (2.81%) Data Architect
14 180 (2.69%) Azure Architect
15 173 (2.59%) Security Engineer
16 170 (2.54%) Platform Engineer
17 159 (2.38%) Technical Architect
18 153 (2.29%) Business Analyst
19 146 (2.19%) Project Manager
20 144 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 511 (7.65%) .NET
2 444 (6.65%) REST
3 270 (4.04%) React
4 245 (3.67%) Kafka
5 228 (3.41%) PySpark
6 209 (3.13%) RESTful
7 204 (3.05%) OAuth
8 170 (2.54%) Node.js
9 168 (2.51%) Spring
10 153 (2.29%) AngularJS
11 145 (2.17%) LDAP
12 138 (2.07%) Spring Boot
13 137 (2.05%) JSON
13 137 (2.05%) SAML
14 126 (1.89%) OpenID
15 114 (1.71%) HTML
15 114 (1.71%) Middleware
15 114 (1.71%) SOAP
16 110 (1.65%) .NET Framework
17 100 (1.50%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 720 (10.78%) Cloud Native
2 287 (4.30%) Onboarding
3 258 (3.86%) Product Ownership
4 213 (3.19%) Data Centre
5 205 (3.07%) Hybrid Cloud
6 201 (3.01%) Distributed Systems
7 185 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
8 155 (2.32%) Security Posture
9 146 (2.19%) AI Agents
10 141 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
11 138 (2.07%) Public Cloud
12 102 (1.53%) Data Structures
13 88 (1.32%) Management Information System
14 86 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
15 85 (1.27%) Replication
16 72 (1.08%) Enterprise Cloud
16 72 (1.08%) PKI
17 68 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
18 62 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
19 56 (0.84%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 783 (11.72%) Windows
2 336 (5.03%) Linux
3 240 (3.59%) Windows Server
4 101 (1.51%) Windows 10
5 69 (1.03%) Unix
6 63 (0.94%) Apple iOS
7 61 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 59 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 55 (0.82%) Android
10 48 (0.72%) VMS
11 34 (0.51%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
14 12 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 6 (0.090%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.090%) Rocky
17 6 (0.090%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,438 (36.49%) DevOps
2 2,055 (30.76%) CI/CD
3 1,596 (23.89%) Agile
4 1,050 (15.72%) AI
5 994 (14.88%) Infrastructure as Code
6 987 (14.77%) Analytics
7 962 (14.40%) Migration
8 923 (13.82%) Problem-Solving
9 782 (11.70%) Stakeholder Management
10 756 (11.32%) Data Modelling
11 667 (9.98%) Continuous Improvement
12 662 (9.91%) Data Pipeline
13 648 (9.70%) Roadmaps
14 637 (9.53%) Business Intelligence
15 608 (9.10%) ETL
16 598 (8.95%) Containerisation
17 573 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 568 (8.50%) Microservices
19 566 (8.47%) Data Engineering
20 507 (7.59%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,592 (23.83%) Python
2 1,387 (20.76%) SQL
3 680 (10.18%) PowerShell
4 547 (8.19%) Java
5 534 (7.99%) C#
6 371 (5.55%) JavaScript
7 248 (3.71%) TypeScript
8 227 (3.40%) Bash
9 222 (3.32%) Bicep
10 89 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 78 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.08%) Go
13 70 (1.05%) Scala
14 41 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 35 (0.52%) R
16 32 (0.48%) Shell Script
17 30 (0.45%) PL/SQL
18 28 (0.42%) Kotlin
19 21 (0.31%) C++
20 19 (0.28%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,656 (24.79%) Security Cleared
2 1,374 (20.57%) SC Cleared
3 487 (7.29%) Degree
4 360 (5.39%) Azure Certification
5 217 (3.25%) CISSP
6 183 (2.74%) DV Cleared
7 175 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
8 167 (2.50%) Microsoft Certification
9 164 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
10 156 (2.33%) AWS Certification
11 125 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
12 108 (1.62%) CISM
13 76 (1.14%) CCNP
14 73 (1.09%) PMP
15 67 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 62 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 50 (0.75%) ISTQB
17 50 (0.75%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 475 (7.11%) Data Quality
2 345 (5.16%) QA
3 307 (4.60%) GDPR
4 255 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 240 (3.59%) NIST
6 131 (1.96%) Accessibility
7 97 (1.45%) NCSC
8 84 (1.26%) SLA
9 74 (1.11%) PCI DSS
10 68 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 67 (1.00%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 55 (0.82%) GRC
13 54 (0.81%) WCAG
14 37 (0.55%) PMO
15 35 (0.52%) HIPAA
16 29 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.39%) NIST 800
18 23 (0.34%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.24%) COBIT
20 15 (0.22%) Solvency II
System Software
1 837 (12.53%) Active Directory
2 676 (10.12%) Docker
3 188 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 127 (1.90%) Virtual Desktop
5 121 (1.81%) Virtual Machines
6 90 (1.35%) Hyper-V
7 58 (0.87%) vSphere
8 51 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.45%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.42%) Firmware
11 20 (0.30%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.090%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.090%) IAG
16 6 (0.090%) KVM
17 5 (0.075%) RACF
17 5 (0.075%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,076 (16.11%) Terraform
2 933 (13.96%) Kubernetes
3 366 (5.48%) Microsoft Intune
4 307 (4.60%) Ansible
5 170 (2.54%) Grafana
6 148 (2.22%) Prometheus
7 147 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
8 92 (1.38%) SCCM
9 70 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.58%) Progress Chef
11 38 (0.57%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.54%) Puppet
13 34 (0.51%) FortiGate
14 31 (0.46%) Argo
15 28 (0.42%) Istio
16 21 (0.31%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.28%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.24%) HP ALM
18 16 (0.24%) Packer
19 12 (0.18%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,160 (32.33%) Microsoft
2 641 (9.59%) Databricks
3 314 (4.70%) ServiceNow
4 259 (3.88%) VMware
5 255 (3.82%) Oracle
6 247 (3.70%) Google
7 193 (2.89%) SAP
8 181 (2.71%) Cisco
9 175 (2.62%) OpenAI
10 128 (1.92%) Splunk
11 125 (1.87%) CyberArk
12 124 (1.86%) Palo Alto
13 123 (1.84%) Salesforce
14 113 (1.69%) Foundry
15 89 (1.33%) Okta
16 83 (1.24%) Dynatrace
17 74 (1.11%) Zscaler
18 68 (1.02%) Informatica
19 58 (0.87%) Citrix
20 57 (0.85%) Red Hat