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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,170 3,746 4,941
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.31% 15.37% 13.40%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.35% 41.28% 42.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,445 2,658 3,637
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 £639 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £535
% change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 25 47
10th Percentile £26.37 £21.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £53.28 £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 14,233 9,074 11,755
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.33% 37.22% 31.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,777 6,350 8,496
10th Percentile £318 £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 448 195 318
10th Percentile £15.98 £15.04 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £47.00 £25.50 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +84.31% +22.77% -35.70%
75th Percentile £68.75 £39.38 £32.31
90th Percentile £81.38 £73.25 £61.72
UK median hourly rate £42.69 £27.35 £21.00
% change year-on-year +56.07% +30.24% -40.00%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 3,306 £536 -2.55% 1,048
North of England +4 838 £500 +5.26% 566
South East +2 806 £500 -7.06% 659
Midlands -2 508 £490 -2.00% 292
North West +3 446 £500 - 294
South West +5 379 £525 - 272
West Midlands 0 369 £500 -4.76% 167
Yorkshire +2 341 £500 +17.65% 175
East of England +6 151 £550 -5.17% 196
East Midlands +2 129 £450 -2.96% 124
North East -3 60 £525 +7.69% 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
1 287 (4.65%) SharePoint
2 173 (2.80%) Microsoft Exchange
3 172 (2.79%) Apache Spark
4 167 (2.71%) Confluence
5 93 (1.51%) Apache
6 85 (1.38%) 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 (0.049%) Revit
10 3 (0.049%) Weka
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 91 (1.47%) 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 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 3 (0.049%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,123 (34.41%) AWS
2 1,256 (20.36%) Azure DevOps
3 1,150 (18.64%) GCP
4 801 (12.98%) Power Platform
5 759 (12.30%) Entra ID
6 655 (10.62%) Microsoft 365
7 570 (9.24%) GitHub
8 460 (7.46%) Azure Data Factory
9 323 (5.24%) GitHub Actions
9 323 (5.24%) Serverless
10 302 (4.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 250 (4.05%) SaaS
12 241 (3.91%) Azure AKS
13 225 (3.65%) Dynamics 365
14 213 (3.45%) Power Automate
15 210 (3.40%) Azure Monitor
16 209 (3.39%) PaaS
17 182 (2.95%) Azure Functions
18 176 (2.85%) Azure Logic Apps
19 174 (2.82%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 388 (6.29%) Firewall
2 266 (4.31%) DNS
3 232 (3.76%) VPN
4 204 (3.31%) Network Security
5 160 (2.59%) WAN
6 144 (2.33%) DHCP
7 114 (1.85%) LAN
8 84 (1.36%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.26%) SD-WAN
9 78 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
10 70 (1.13%) VLAN
11 65 (1.05%) Kerberos
12 60 (0.97%) BGP
13 52 (0.84%) OSPF
14 42 (0.68%) SAN
15 38 (0.62%) Wireless
16 34 (0.55%) SSL
17 33 (0.53%) HTTP
18 30 (0.49%) Internet
19 28 (0.45%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 556 (9.01%) Power BI
2 369 (5.98%) SQL Server
3 327 (5.30%) Data Warehouse
4 309 (5.01%) Data Lake
5 207 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 203 (3.29%) Azure SQL Database
7 171 (2.77%) NoSQL
8 149 (2.41%) Metadata
9 138 (2.24%) Delta Lake
10 95 (1.54%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.43%) Big Data
11 88 (1.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 78 (1.26%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.18%) Tableau
14 64 (1.04%) Oracle Database
15 58 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
16 56 (0.91%) BigQuery
17 46 (0.75%) Star Schema
18 45 (0.73%) Spark SQL
19 43 (0.70%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 451 (7.31%) Git
2 425 (6.89%) JIRA
3 301 (4.88%) Jenkins
4 229 (3.71%) GitLab
5 99 (1.60%) Selenium
6 63 (1.02%) Postman
7 54 (0.88%) Cucumber
8 53 (0.86%) JUnit
9 51 (0.83%) MLflow
10 47 (0.76%) JMeter
11 42 (0.68%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.57%) SonarQube
13 34 (0.55%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.53%) Cypress.io
15 25 (0.41%) TestRail
15 25 (0.41%) WebDriver
16 24 (0.39%) Gatling
17 23 (0.37%) Bitbucket
17 23 (0.37%) Visual Studio
18 22 (0.36%) Maven
General
1 1,619 (26.24%) Social Skills
2 1,151 (18.65%) Finance
3 641 (10.39%) Public Sector
4 586 (9.50%) Analytical Skills
5 349 (5.66%) Banking
6 191 (3.10%) Documentation Skills
7 146 (2.37%) Legal
8 93 (1.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.38%) Retail
10 84 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
12 68 (1.10%) Financial Institution
13 64 (1.04%) Marketing
14 63 (1.02%) Law
15 62 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
16 61 (0.99%) Investment Banking
17 60 (0.97%) Front Office
18 53 (0.86%) Telecoms
19 42 (0.68%) Local Government
20 38 (0.62%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,018 (16.50%) Architect
2 772 (12.51%) Developer
3 744 (12.06%) Senior
4 568 (9.21%) Azure Engineer
5 527 (8.54%) Data Engineer
6 461 (7.47%) Lead
7 386 (6.26%) Analyst
8 321 (5.20%) DevOps Engineer
9 266 (4.31%) Solutions Architect
10 244 (3.95%) Consultant
11 205 (3.32%) Cloud Engineer
12 191 (3.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 160 (2.59%) Azure Architect
14 154 (2.50%) Security Engineer
15 149 (2.41%) Platform Engineer
16 138 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 136 (2.20%) Data Architect
17 136 (2.20%) Technical Architect
18 128 (2.07%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 126 (2.04%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 462 (7.49%) .NET
2 392 (6.35%) REST
3 251 (4.07%) React
4 246 (3.99%) Kafka
5 223 (3.61%) PySpark
6 201 (3.26%) Node.js
7 178 (2.88%) RESTful
8 174 (2.82%) Spring
9 171 (2.77%) OAuth
10 159 (2.58%) LDAP
11 155 (2.51%) AngularJS
12 137 (2.22%) Spring Boot
13 120 (1.94%) JSON
14 119 (1.93%) SAML
15 118 (1.91%) Middleware
16 116 (1.88%) HTML
16 116 (1.88%) SOAP
17 109 (1.77%) OpenID
18 99 (1.60%) PyTorch
19 97 (1.57%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 605 (9.81%) Cloud Native
2 245 (3.97%) Onboarding
3 215 (3.48%) Product Ownership
4 180 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
5 158 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
6 150 (2.43%) Data Centre
7 148 (2.40%) Enterprise Software
8 144 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
9 143 (2.32%) Security Posture
10 134 (2.17%) Public Cloud
11 115 (1.86%) AI Agents
12 83 (1.35%) Data Structures
13 81 (1.31%) Replication
14 71 (1.15%) Management Information System
15 67 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
16 56 (0.91%) PKI
17 55 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
17 55 (0.89%) Low-Code
18 49 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
19 47 (0.76%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 688 (11.15%) Windows
2 309 (5.01%) Linux
3 208 (3.37%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.78%) Windows 10
5 62 (1.00%) Unix
6 59 (0.96%) VMS
7 54 (0.88%) Mac OS
8 46 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.71%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.52%) 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 2,303 (37.33%) DevOps
2 1,892 (30.66%) CI/CD
3 1,425 (23.10%) Agile
4 936 (15.17%) Analytics
5 926 (15.01%) Problem-Solving
6 881 (14.28%) AI
7 866 (14.04%) Infrastructure as Code
8 832 (13.48%) Migration
9 704 (11.41%) Data Modelling
10 616 (9.98%) Business Intelligence
11 615 (9.97%) Data Pipeline
12 612 (9.92%) Stakeholder Management
13 596 (9.66%) Continuous Improvement
14 581 (9.42%) ETL
15 580 (9.40%) Containerisation
16 544 (8.82%) Microservices
17 533 (8.64%) Data Engineering
18 517 (8.38%) Roadmaps
19 506 (8.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 476 (7.71%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,532 (24.83%) Python
2 1,355 (21.96%) SQL
3 659 (10.68%) PowerShell
4 527 (8.54%) Java
5 519 (8.41%) C#
6 368 (5.96%) JavaScript
7 223 (3.61%) TypeScript
8 217 (3.52%) Bash
9 195 (3.16%) Bicep
10 92 (1.49%) Scala
11 82 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 78 (1.26%) Go
13 72 (1.17%) T-SQL
14 56 (0.91%) Kusto Query Language
15 52 (0.84%) PL/SQL
16 43 (0.70%) R
17 35 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.36%) C++
19 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,567 (25.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,308 (21.20%) SC Cleared
3 444 (7.20%) Degree
4 346 (5.61%) Azure Certification
5 178 (2.88%) Computer Science Degree
6 166 (2.69%) CISSP
7 143 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 136 (2.20%) Cisco Certification
9 129 (2.09%) DV Cleared
10 118 (1.91%) AWS Certification
11 102 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
12 96 (1.56%) CISM
13 67 (1.09%) 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 (0.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 34 (0.55%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (7.18%) Data Quality
2 333 (5.40%) GDPR
3 332 (5.38%) QA
4 249 (4.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 225 (3.65%) NIST
6 92 (1.49%) Accessibility
7 79 (1.28%) NCSC
7 79 (1.28%) PCI DSS
8 61 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
9 59 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 57 (0.92%) SLA
11 48 (0.78%) PMO
12 41 (0.66%) GRC
13 34 (0.55%) HIPAA
14 29 (0.47%) WCAG
15 22 (0.36%) NIST 800
16 20 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 20 (0.32%) ISO 20022
17 18 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 16 (0.26%) PSD2
System Software
1 798 (12.93%) Active Directory
2 689 (11.17%) Docker
3 171 (2.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.77%) Virtual Machines
5 99 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
6 89 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 54 (0.88%) vSphere
8 33 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
9 25 (0.41%) 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
1 975 (15.80%) Terraform
2 914 (14.81%) Kubernetes
3 337 (5.46%) Microsoft Intune
4 272 (4.41%) Ansible
5 168 (2.72%) Grafana
6 143 (2.32%) Prometheus
7 134 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
8 104 (1.69%) 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 24 (0.39%) FortiGate
14 21 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
15 20 (0.32%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
17 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.24%) linkerd
19 14 (0.23%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,032 (32.93%) Microsoft
2 619 (10.03%) Databricks
3 270 (4.38%) ServiceNow
4 269 (4.36%) Oracle
5 268 (4.34%) Google
6 245 (3.97%) VMware
7 179 (2.90%) SAP
8 160 (2.59%) OpenAI
9 155 (2.51%) Cisco
10 133 (2.16%) Splunk
11 130 (2.11%) CyberArk
12 105 (1.70%) Foundry
13 94 (1.52%) Palo Alto
14 93 (1.51%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.28%) Okta
16 68 (1.10%) Citrix
17 66 (1.07%) BeyondTrust
18 63 (1.02%) Informatica
19 62 (1.00%) Dynatrace
20 58 (0.94%) IBM