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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,193 3,743 4,978
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.30% 15.36% 13.42%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.28% 41.26% 42.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,465 2,657 3,659
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.00%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK median daily rate £523 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.38% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 116 25 47
10th Percentile £26.59 £21.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.81 £26.45 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.75% +14.29% -36.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £91.48 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% - -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 14,310 9,071 11,836
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.35% 37.21% 31.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,845 6,350 8,547
10th Percentile £315 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £744 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 448 194 318
10th Percentile £15.98 £15.03 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £15.86
Median hourly rate £46.90 £25.98 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +80.56% +25.06% -31.90%
75th Percentile £68.07 £39.69 £31.75
90th Percentile £81.38 £73.38 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £27.43 £20.97
% change year-on-year +55.64% +30.78% -40.09%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 3,323 £536 -2.55% 1,085
North of England +3 838 £500 +5.26% 625
South East +2 807 £500 -7.06% 708
Midlands -2 508 £490 -2.00% 330
North West +3 446 £500 - 317
South West +6 383 £525 - 287
West Midlands 0 369 £500 -4.76% 184
Yorkshire +2 342 £500 +17.65% 208
East of England +4 151 £550 -5.17% 217
East Midlands +2 129 £450 -2.96% 145
North East -3 59 £525 +7.69% 101
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
1 289 (4.67%) SharePoint
2 176 (2.84%) Microsoft Exchange
3 173 (2.79%) Apache Spark
4 167 (2.70%) Confluence
5 94 (1.52%) Apache
6 85 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) IIS
8 18 (0.29%) SAS
9 14 (0.23%) CMS
10 13 (0.21%) Appian
10 13 (0.21%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.21%) Camunda
10 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.21%) Mendix
11 12 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.081%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.081%) Umbraco
14 5 (0.081%) WebLogic
Applications
1 97 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 81 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 19 (0.31%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.081%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.065%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.065%) AutoCAD
9 4 (0.065%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.048%) Revit
10 3 (0.048%) Weka
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 92 (1.49%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.18%) Maximo
3 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
5 9 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
6 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
7 5 (0.081%) Cloudability
7 5 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.065%) Oracle FAH
8 4 (0.065%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.065%) Shopify
8 4 (0.065%) Unit4 Business World
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,129 (34.38%) AWS
2 1,269 (20.49%) Azure DevOps
3 1,154 (18.63%) GCP
4 805 (13.00%) Power Platform
5 767 (12.38%) Entra ID
6 656 (10.59%) Microsoft 365
7 574 (9.27%) GitHub
8 462 (7.46%) Azure Data Factory
9 327 (5.28%) GitHub Actions
9 327 (5.28%) Serverless
10 303 (4.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 250 (4.04%) SaaS
12 242 (3.91%) Azure AKS
13 226 (3.65%) Dynamics 365
14 213 (3.44%) Azure Monitor
14 213 (3.44%) Power Automate
15 210 (3.39%) PaaS
16 185 (2.99%) Azure Functions
17 178 (2.87%) Azure Logic Apps
18 174 (2.81%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 392 (6.33%) Firewall
2 270 (4.36%) DNS
3 235 (3.79%) VPN
4 205 (3.31%) Network Security
5 162 (2.62%) WAN
6 145 (2.34%) DHCP
7 116 (1.87%) LAN
8 85 (1.37%) TCP/IP
9 79 (1.28%) SD-WAN
9 79 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
10 70 (1.13%) VLAN
11 66 (1.07%) Kerberos
12 60 (0.97%) BGP
13 52 (0.84%) OSPF
14 42 (0.68%) SAN
15 38 (0.61%) Wireless
16 34 (0.55%) SSL
17 33 (0.53%) HTTP
18 30 (0.48%) Internet
19 28 (0.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 559 (9.03%) Power BI
2 371 (5.99%) SQL Server
3 328 (5.30%) Data Warehouse
4 311 (5.02%) Data Lake
5 210 (3.39%) PostgreSQL
6 204 (3.29%) Azure SQL Database
7 171 (2.76%) NoSQL
8 149 (2.41%) Metadata
9 139 (2.24%) Delta Lake
10 95 (1.53%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.44%) Big Data
12 88 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 78 (1.26%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.19%) Tableau
15 64 (1.03%) Oracle Database
16 58 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
17 56 (0.90%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.74%) Spark SQL
18 46 (0.74%) Star Schema
19 44 (0.71%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 456 (7.36%) Git
2 426 (6.88%) JIRA
3 303 (4.89%) Jenkins
4 228 (3.68%) GitLab
5 101 (1.63%) Selenium
6 64 (1.03%) Postman
7 55 (0.89%) Cucumber
7 55 (0.89%) JUnit
8 51 (0.82%) MLflow
9 47 (0.76%) JMeter
10 42 (0.68%) REST Assured
11 35 (0.57%) SonarQube
12 34 (0.55%) Artifactory
13 33 (0.53%) Cypress.io
14 25 (0.40%) TestRail
14 25 (0.40%) WebDriver
15 24 (0.39%) Bitbucket
15 24 (0.39%) Gatling
16 23 (0.37%) Visual Studio
17 22 (0.36%) Maven
General
1 1,634 (26.38%) Social Skills
2 1,159 (18.71%) Finance
3 645 (10.41%) Public Sector
4 588 (9.49%) Analytical Skills
5 350 (5.65%) Banking
6 193 (3.12%) Documentation Skills
7 146 (2.36%) Legal
8 93 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 87 (1.40%) Retail
10 84 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 68 (1.10%) Financial Institution
13 65 (1.05%) Marketing
14 64 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
15 63 (1.02%) Law
16 62 (1.00%) Investment Banking
17 61 (0.98%) Front Office
18 54 (0.87%) Telecoms
19 43 (0.69%) Local Government
20 38 (0.61%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,018 (16.44%) Architect
2 783 (12.64%) Developer
3 752 (12.14%) Senior
4 571 (9.22%) Azure Engineer
5 530 (8.56%) Data Engineer
6 464 (7.49%) Lead
7 388 (6.27%) Analyst
8 318 (5.13%) DevOps Engineer
9 266 (4.30%) Solutions Architect
10 244 (3.94%) Consultant
11 203 (3.28%) Cloud Engineer
12 192 (3.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 161 (2.60%) Azure Architect
14 153 (2.47%) Security Engineer
15 151 (2.44%) Platform Engineer
16 137 (2.21%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 137 (2.21%) Data Architect
17 135 (2.18%) Technical Architect
18 130 (2.10%) Senior Developer
19 129 (2.08%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (7.57%) .NET
2 395 (6.38%) REST
3 254 (4.10%) React
4 246 (3.97%) Kafka
5 223 (3.60%) PySpark
6 202 (3.26%) Node.js
7 181 (2.92%) RESTful
8 175 (2.83%) Spring
9 172 (2.78%) OAuth
10 159 (2.57%) LDAP
11 156 (2.52%) AngularJS
12 138 (2.23%) Spring Boot
13 121 (1.95%) JSON
14 120 (1.94%) SAML
15 118 (1.91%) HTML
15 118 (1.91%) Middleware
16 117 (1.89%) SOAP
17 110 (1.78%) OpenID
18 100 (1.61%) PyTorch
19 98 (1.58%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 607 (9.80%) Cloud Native
2 246 (3.97%) Onboarding
3 217 (3.50%) Product Ownership
4 180 (2.91%) Hybrid Cloud
5 160 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
6 151 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
7 150 (2.42%) Data Centre
8 145 (2.34%) Distributed Systems
8 145 (2.34%) Security Posture
9 135 (2.18%) Public Cloud
10 116 (1.87%) AI Agents
11 83 (1.34%) Data Structures
12 81 (1.31%) Replication
13 71 (1.15%) Management Information System
14 68 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
15 56 (0.90%) PKI
16 55 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
16 55 (0.89%) Low-Code
17 50 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
18 47 (0.76%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 691 (11.16%) Windows
2 309 (4.99%) Linux
3 210 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.79%) Windows 10
5 62 (1.00%) Unix
6 59 (0.95%) VMS
7 54 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 46 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.71%) Apple iOS
10 33 (0.53%) Android
11 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.29%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.13%) AIX
17 7 (0.11%) CentOS
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.097%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.097%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,318 (37.43%) DevOps
2 1,900 (30.68%) CI/CD
3 1,438 (23.22%) Agile
4 941 (15.19%) Analytics
5 931 (15.03%) Problem-Solving
6 882 (14.24%) AI
7 868 (14.02%) Infrastructure as Code
8 836 (13.50%) Migration
9 708 (11.43%) Data Modelling
10 620 (10.01%) Business Intelligence
11 617 (9.96%) Data Pipeline
12 616 (9.95%) Stakeholder Management
13 598 (9.66%) Continuous Improvement
14 583 (9.41%) Containerisation
14 583 (9.41%) ETL
15 547 (8.83%) Microservices
16 535 (8.64%) Data Engineering
17 518 (8.36%) Roadmaps
18 509 (8.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 475 (7.67%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,540 (24.87%) Python
2 1,367 (22.07%) SQL
3 663 (10.71%) PowerShell
4 531 (8.57%) Java
5 526 (8.49%) C#
6 377 (6.09%) JavaScript
7 225 (3.63%) TypeScript
8 217 (3.50%) Bash
9 198 (3.20%) Bicep
10 92 (1.49%) Scala
11 82 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 78 (1.26%) Go
13 72 (1.16%) T-SQL
14 57 (0.92%) Kusto Query Language
15 56 (0.90%) PL/SQL
16 43 (0.69%) R
17 35 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.36%) C++
19 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,574 (25.42%) Security Cleared
2 1,315 (21.23%) SC Cleared
3 446 (7.20%) Degree
4 348 (5.62%) Azure Certification
5 179 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 166 (2.68%) CISSP
7 142 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 137 (2.21%) Cisco Certification
9 128 (2.07%) DV Cleared
10 119 (1.92%) AWS Certification
11 103 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
12 96 (1.55%) CISM
13 68 (1.10%) CCNP
14 63 (1.02%) PMP
15 60 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 55 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
17 53 (0.86%) Master's Degree
18 50 (0.81%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 35 (0.57%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (7.17%) Data Quality
2 336 (5.43%) QA
3 334 (5.39%) GDPR
4 250 (4.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 226 (3.65%) NIST
6 93 (1.50%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.31%) NCSC
8 79 (1.28%) PCI DSS
9 61 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 59 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 57 (0.92%) SLA
12 48 (0.78%) PMO
13 41 (0.66%) GRC
14 34 (0.55%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.48%) WCAG
16 22 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 20 (0.32%) ISO 20022
18 18 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 16 (0.26%) PSD2
System Software
1 805 (13.00%) Active Directory
2 693 (11.19%) Docker
3 171 (2.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
5 99 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
6 90 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 54 (0.87%) vSphere
8 33 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
9 25 (0.40%) Firmware
10 19 (0.31%) VMware NSX
11 18 (0.29%) NFS
12 11 (0.18%) Postfix
13 8 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.097%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.097%) RACF
14 6 (0.097%) Varnish
15 5 (0.081%) HDFS
15 5 (0.081%) KVM
15 5 (0.081%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.081%) Snort
Systems Management
1 979 (15.81%) Terraform
2 916 (14.79%) Kubernetes
3 337 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 272 (4.39%) Ansible
5 168 (2.71%) Grafana
6 143 (2.31%) Prometheus
7 134 (2.16%) Single Sign-On
8 104 (1.68%) SCCM
9 65 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 34 (0.55%) Argo
10 34 (0.55%) Istio
11 33 (0.53%) Puppet
12 27 (0.44%) Progress Chef
13 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
14 21 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
15 20 (0.32%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.27%) Kubeflow
17 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.24%) linkerd
19 14 (0.23%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,043 (32.99%) Microsoft
2 622 (10.04%) Databricks
3 274 (4.42%) Oracle
4 270 (4.36%) ServiceNow
5 268 (4.33%) Google
6 246 (3.97%) VMware
7 180 (2.91%) SAP
8 161 (2.60%) OpenAI
9 156 (2.52%) Cisco
10 134 (2.16%) Splunk
11 131 (2.12%) CyberArk
12 106 (1.71%) Foundry
13 94 (1.52%) Palo Alto
14 93 (1.50%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.28%) Okta
16 68 (1.10%) Citrix
17 67 (1.08%) BeyondTrust
18 63 (1.02%) Informatica
19 62 (1.00%) Dynatrace
20 58 (0.94%) IBM