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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,252 3,726 4,930
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.16% 15.39% 13.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.35% 41.29% 42.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,481 2,628 3,635
10th Percentile £363 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year - -3.23% -3.56%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £536
% change year-on-year - -2.01% -2.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 24 47
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -44.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £89.38 £93.61 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%

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 14,423 9,023 11,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.98% 37.26% 32.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,870 6,247 8,432
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £745
UK median daily rate £505 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 471 200 326
10th Percentile £15.62 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.34 £18.13 £15.92
Median hourly rate £41.06 £25.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +61.02% +19.33% -33.84%
75th Percentile £67.50 £37.56 £35.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.38 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £27.76 £21.37
% change year-on-year +35.09% +29.90% -38.94%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 3,340 £538 -2.27% 917
North of England +3 882 £500 +5.26% 538
South East +3 824 £500 -0.99% 618
Midlands -4 492 £493 -1.50% 268
North West +3 445 £500 +2.56% 298
South West +6 386 £525 - 257
Yorkshire +9 369 £500 +11.86% 148
West Midlands -2 356 £498 -5.24% 168
East of England +4 145 £550 -6.78% 168
East Midlands +4 126 £463 - 99
North East 0 77 £525 +5.00% 94
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
1 301 (4.81%) SharePoint
2 177 (2.83%) Apache Spark
3 175 (2.80%) Confluence
4 169 (2.70%) Microsoft Exchange
5 94 (1.50%) Apache
6 87 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.37%) IIS
8 19 (0.30%) SAS
9 15 (0.24%) CMS
10 13 (0.21%) Mendix
11 12 (0.19%) Appian
11 12 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 12 (0.19%) Camunda
11 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.16%) OpenStack
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.096%) Umbraco
15 6 (0.096%) WebSphere
16 5 (0.080%) WebLogic
Applications
1 86 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 81 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.080%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.064%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.064%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.064%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.048%) Revit
10 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.032%) Notion
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 89 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 70 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
4 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
4 9 (0.14%) Maximo
4 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
5 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.11%) NEC Housing
6 7 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.096%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.080%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.080%) Shopify
8 5 (0.080%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.064%) Endur
9 4 (0.064%) Magento
9 4 (0.064%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.064%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.064%) SAP BPC
10 3 (0.048%) Findur
Cloud Services
1 2,142 (34.26%) AWS
2 1,264 (20.22%) Azure DevOps
3 1,106 (17.69%) GCP
4 800 (12.80%) Power Platform
5 772 (12.35%) Entra ID
6 654 (10.46%) Microsoft 365
7 572 (9.15%) GitHub
8 456 (7.29%) Azure Data Factory
9 324 (5.18%) GitHub Actions
10 314 (5.02%) Serverless
11 297 (4.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 247 (3.95%) SaaS
13 232 (3.71%) Azure AKS
14 216 (3.45%) Dynamics 365
15 215 (3.44%) Power Automate
16 206 (3.29%) PaaS
17 200 (3.20%) Azure Monitor
18 175 (2.80%) Azure Functions
18 175 (2.80%) PowerApps
19 172 (2.75%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 384 (6.14%) Firewall
2 273 (4.37%) DNS
3 228 (3.65%) VPN
4 208 (3.33%) Network Security
5 173 (2.77%) WAN
6 148 (2.37%) DHCP
7 115 (1.84%) LAN
8 90 (1.44%) SD-WAN
9 89 (1.42%) TCP/IP
10 72 (1.15%) BGP
11 71 (1.14%) Wi-Fi
12 70 (1.12%) VLAN
13 66 (1.06%) Kerberos
14 62 (0.99%) OSPF
15 46 (0.74%) SAN
16 40 (0.64%) Wireless
17 39 (0.62%) SSL
18 36 (0.58%) VXLAN
19 30 (0.48%) HTTP
20 29 (0.46%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 550 (8.80%) Power BI
2 376 (6.01%) SQL Server
3 322 (5.15%) Data Warehouse
4 303 (4.85%) Data Lake
5 208 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
6 194 (3.10%) Azure SQL Database
7 176 (2.82%) NoSQL
8 145 (2.32%) Metadata
9 138 (2.21%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.54%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.41%) Big Data
11 88 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 77 (1.23%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.17%) Tableau
14 60 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
15 59 (0.94%) Oracle Database
16 56 (0.90%) BigQuery
17 46 (0.74%) Spark SQL
17 46 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 43 (0.69%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 458 (7.33%) Git
2 432 (6.91%) JIRA
3 307 (4.91%) Jenkins
4 238 (3.81%) GitLab
5 95 (1.52%) Selenium
6 62 (0.99%) Postman
7 50 (0.80%) Cucumber
8 49 (0.78%) MLflow
9 48 (0.77%) JMeter
10 47 (0.75%) JUnit
11 43 (0.69%) REST Assured
12 39 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 31 (0.50%) Cypress.io
14 30 (0.48%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.43%) Maven
16 26 (0.42%) Visual Studio
17 24 (0.38%) Gatling
17 24 (0.38%) WebDriver
18 23 (0.37%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,580 (25.27%) Social Skills
2 1,196 (19.13%) Finance
3 627 (10.03%) Public Sector
4 571 (9.13%) Analytical Skills
5 359 (5.74%) Banking
6 168 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
7 146 (2.34%) Legal
8 100 (1.60%) Retail
9 99 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 88 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
11 72 (1.15%) Financial Institution
12 66 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
13 65 (1.04%) Investment Banking
14 60 (0.96%) Front Office
14 60 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
15 58 (0.93%) Marketing
16 56 (0.90%) Law
17 47 (0.75%) Telecoms
18 41 (0.66%) Military
19 36 (0.58%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,061 (16.97%) Architect
2 756 (12.09%) Senior
3 750 (12.00%) Developer
4 580 (9.28%) Azure Engineer
5 531 (8.49%) Data Engineer
6 458 (7.33%) Lead
7 385 (6.16%) Analyst
8 325 (5.20%) DevOps Engineer
9 288 (4.61%) Solutions Architect
10 260 (4.16%) Consultant
11 209 (3.34%) Cloud Engineer
11 209 (3.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 169 (2.70%) Security Engineer
13 165 (2.64%) Azure Architect
14 156 (2.50%) Data Architect
15 146 (2.34%) Platform Engineer
16 141 (2.26%) Technical Architect
17 139 (2.22%) Project Manager
18 137 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 131 (2.10%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 472 (7.55%) .NET
2 405 (6.48%) REST
3 258 (4.13%) React
4 240 (3.84%) Kafka
5 231 (3.69%) PySpark
6 185 (2.96%) RESTful
7 183 (2.93%) Node.js
8 174 (2.78%) OAuth
9 162 (2.59%) LDAP
10 160 (2.56%) Spring
11 155 (2.48%) AngularJS
12 130 (2.08%) Spring Boot
13 124 (1.98%) JSON
13 124 (1.98%) Middleware
13 124 (1.98%) SOAP
14 117 (1.87%) SAML
15 111 (1.78%) OpenID
16 109 (1.74%) HTML
17 99 (1.58%) YAML
18 94 (1.50%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 607 (9.71%) Cloud Native
2 254 (4.06%) Onboarding
3 215 (3.44%) Product Ownership
4 184 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 180 (2.88%) Data Centre
6 155 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
7 149 (2.38%) Distributed Systems
8 146 (2.34%) Security Posture
9 139 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
10 128 (2.05%) Public Cloud
11 122 (1.95%) AI Agents
12 88 (1.41%) Data Structures
13 84 (1.34%) Replication
14 70 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
15 64 (1.02%) Management Information System
16 56 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
16 56 (0.90%) PKI
17 55 (0.88%) Low-Code
18 52 (0.83%) Enterprise Cloud
18 52 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 705 (11.28%) Windows
2 315 (5.04%) Linux
3 208 (3.33%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.84%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.06%) Unix
6 60 (0.96%) Mac OS
7 59 (0.94%) Apple iOS
8 55 (0.88%) VMS
9 47 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 41 (0.66%) Android
11 24 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (0.37%) Ubuntu
13 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.14%) CentOS
16 9 (0.14%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.096%) AIX
18 6 (0.096%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,325 (37.19%) DevOps
2 1,924 (30.77%) CI/CD
3 1,438 (23.00%) Agile
4 924 (14.78%) Analytics
5 895 (14.32%) AI
6 890 (14.24%) Infrastructure as Code
7 889 (14.22%) Problem-Solving
8 876 (14.01%) Migration
9 727 (11.63%) Data Modelling
10 644 (10.30%) Stakeholder Management
11 621 (9.93%) Data Pipeline
12 609 (9.74%) Business Intelligence
13 600 (9.60%) ETL
14 593 (9.48%) Continuous Improvement
15 571 (9.13%) Containerisation
16 544 (8.70%) Roadmaps
17 540 (8.64%) Microservices
18 534 (8.54%) Data Engineering
19 501 (8.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 451 (7.21%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,495 (23.91%) Python
2 1,334 (21.34%) SQL
3 649 (10.38%) PowerShell
4 512 (8.19%) C#
5 508 (8.13%) Java
6 362 (5.79%) JavaScript
7 215 (3.44%) Bash
8 211 (3.37%) TypeScript
9 194 (3.10%) Bicep
10 92 (1.47%) Scala
11 85 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 78 (1.25%) T-SQL
13 70 (1.12%) Go
14 46 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
15 39 (0.62%) PL/SQL
16 37 (0.59%) R
17 34 (0.54%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.35%) C++
19 21 (0.34%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,556 (24.89%) Security Cleared
2 1,305 (20.87%) SC Cleared
3 452 (7.23%) Degree
4 342 (5.47%) Azure Certification
5 178 (2.85%) CISSP
6 171 (2.74%) Computer Science Degree
7 148 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
8 143 (2.29%) DV Cleared
9 136 (2.18%) Microsoft Certification
10 116 (1.86%) AWS Certification
11 105 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
12 100 (1.60%) CISM
13 71 (1.14%) CCNP
14 68 (1.09%) PMP
15 62 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 54 (0.86%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 52 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.75%) ISTQB
18 47 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
19 38 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (7.17%) Data Quality
2 332 (5.31%) QA
3 308 (4.93%) GDPR
4 246 (3.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 230 (3.68%) NIST
6 102 (1.63%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.30%) NCSC
8 79 (1.26%) PCI DSS
9 68 (1.09%) SLA
10 62 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
11 61 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 48 (0.77%) PMO
13 46 (0.74%) GRC
14 37 (0.59%) WCAG
15 35 (0.56%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.38%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 17 (0.27%) ISO 20022
18 17 (0.27%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 799 (12.78%) Active Directory
2 669 (10.70%) Docker
3 182 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 112 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
5 105 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 89 (1.42%) Hyper-V
7 57 (0.91%) vSphere
8 38 (0.61%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.42%) Firmware
10 22 (0.35%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.30%) NFS
12 14 (0.22%) Postfix
13 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.096%) RACF
16 5 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.080%) KVM
16 5 (0.080%) Snort
16 5 (0.080%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.064%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 976 (15.61%) Terraform
2 896 (14.33%) Kubernetes
3 332 (5.31%) Microsoft Intune
4 280 (4.48%) Ansible
5 169 (2.70%) Grafana
6 143 (2.29%) Prometheus
7 134 (2.14%) Single Sign-On
8 98 (1.57%) SCCM
9 69 (1.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.56%) Puppet
11 32 (0.51%) Argo
11 32 (0.51%) Istio
12 29 (0.46%) Jamf Pro
13 27 (0.43%) Progress Chef
14 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.27%) HP ALM
17 16 (0.26%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.24%) linkerd
19 14 (0.22%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,031 (32.49%) Microsoft
2 636 (10.17%) Databricks
3 289 (4.62%) ServiceNow
4 255 (4.08%) Oracle
5 252 (4.03%) VMware
6 234 (3.74%) Google
7 186 (2.98%) SAP
8 169 (2.70%) Cisco
9 160 (2.56%) OpenAI
10 142 (2.27%) Splunk
11 134 (2.14%) CyberArk
12 115 (1.84%) Palo Alto
13 100 (1.60%) Foundry
14 92 (1.47%) Salesforce
15 82 (1.31%) Okta
16 70 (1.12%) Dynatrace
17 66 (1.06%) Citrix
18 64 (1.02%) BeyondTrust
19 63 (1.01%) Zscaler
20 59 (0.94%) Informatica