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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,119 4,087 4,890
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.64% 14.81% 14.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.61% 39.76% 43.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,986 2,840 3,589
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £437 £421 £445
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 162 33 31
10th Percentile £19.50 £20.30 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -40.32%
75th Percentile £79.75 £76.25 £55.25
90th Percentile £100.76 £100.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £35.00
% change year-on-year +33.02% +23.50% -40.32%

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 15,958 10,279 11,326
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.07% 37.24% 33.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,654 6,968 8,061
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £423 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.34% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £519 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.75% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 568 267 246
10th Percentile £16.62 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.13 £16.10
Median hourly rate £37.37 £26.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.73% +18.18% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £51.43
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £27.50 £23.80
% change year-on-year +29.09% +15.55% -32.00%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 3,737 £550 - 1,511
North of England +8 1,026 £500 +5.26% 633
South East +2 905 £525 +5.00% 718
Midlands +4 648 £493 -1.50% 306
North West +7 536 £500 +4.17% 358
West Midlands +2 491 £493 -6.19% 193
South West +7 441 £539 +7.75% 281
Yorkshire +5 410 £500 +5.26% 200
East of England +3 180 £535 -2.73% 160
East Midlands +9 145 £488 +5.41% 113
North East +5 94 £516 +3.25% 89
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
1 376 (5.28%) SharePoint
2 242 (3.40%) Confluence
3 181 (2.54%) Microsoft Exchange
4 162 (2.28%) Apache Spark
5 131 (1.84%) Apache Airflow
6 110 (1.55%) Apache
7 39 (0.55%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 15 (0.21%) 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%) Camunda
16 6 (0.084%) Documentum
16 6 (0.084%) Jupyter
16 6 (0.084%) Mendix
Applications
1 107 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
3 66 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
4 31 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.41%) 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 4 (0.056%) 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%) PTC Creo
15 1 (0.014%) SOLIDWORKS
15 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 101 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Maximo
5 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
5 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.098%) Shopify
7 6 (0.084%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.070%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
9 4 (0.056%) Endur
9 4 (0.056%) Ripple
9 4 (0.056%) SAP MM
9 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,517 (35.36%) AWS
2 1,492 (20.96%) Azure DevOps
3 1,209 (16.98%) GCP
4 921 (12.94%) Entra ID
5 895 (12.57%) Power Platform
6 717 (10.07%) Microsoft 365
7 675 (9.48%) GitHub
8 434 (6.10%) Azure Data Factory
9 410 (5.76%) GitHub Actions
10 312 (4.38%) Serverless
11 297 (4.17%) SaaS
12 288 (4.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 260 (3.65%) Azure AKS
14 253 (3.55%) Power Automate
15 249 (3.50%) Azure Monitor
16 233 (3.27%) Dynamics 365
17 229 (3.22%) PaaS
18 227 (3.19%) PowerApps
19 216 (3.03%) Snowflake
20 195 (2.74%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 477 (6.70%) Firewall
2 350 (4.92%) DNS
3 290 (4.07%) VPN
4 259 (3.64%) Network Security
5 187 (2.63%) WAN
6 181 (2.54%) DHCP
7 155 (2.18%) TCP/IP
8 117 (1.64%) LAN
9 111 (1.56%) BGP
10 91 (1.28%) OSPF
10 91 (1.28%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.24%) VLAN
12 73 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 64 (0.90%) SSL
14 58 (0.81%) SAN
15 54 (0.76%) Wireless
16 45 (0.63%) IPsec
16 45 (0.63%) VXLAN
17 39 (0.55%) Internet
18 38 (0.53%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 637 (8.95%) Power BI
2 422 (5.93%) SQL Server
3 368 (5.17%) Data Warehouse
4 310 (4.35%) Data Lake
5 257 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
6 186 (2.61%) NoSQL
7 179 (2.51%) Metadata
8 174 (2.44%) Azure SQL Database
9 126 (1.77%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.63%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.25%) Big Data
12 86 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 72 (1.01%) MongoDB
14 65 (0.91%) Tableau
15 64 (0.90%) MySQL
16 60 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
17 58 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
18 51 (0.72%) Star Schema
19 50 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 544 (7.64%) Git
2 531 (7.46%) JIRA
3 354 (4.97%) Jenkins
4 273 (3.83%) GitLab
5 106 (1.49%) Selenium
6 61 (0.86%) JUnit
7 52 (0.73%) JMeter
8 51 (0.72%) Cucumber
8 51 (0.72%) Postman
9 49 (0.69%) SonarQube
10 47 (0.66%) Cypress.io
11 41 (0.58%) Maven
12 39 (0.55%) WebDriver
13 36 (0.51%) REST Assured
14 35 (0.49%) Visual Studio
15 34 (0.48%) MLflow
16 30 (0.42%) Gradle
17 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
18 26 (0.37%) Gatling
19 24 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,811 (25.44%) Social Skills
2 1,402 (19.69%) Finance
3 775 (10.89%) Public Sector
4 701 (9.85%) Analytical Skills
5 404 (5.67%) Banking
6 193 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 180 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 178 (2.50%) Retail
9 152 (2.14%) Legal
10 87 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 83 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 79 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
13 73 (1.03%) Manufacturing
14 71 (1.00%) Law
15 67 (0.94%) Financial Institution
16 66 (0.93%) Investment Banking
16 66 (0.93%) Marketing
17 65 (0.91%) Front Office
18 58 (0.81%) Aerospace
19 56 (0.79%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,272 (17.87%) Architect
2 912 (12.81%) Senior
3 849 (11.93%) Developer
4 622 (8.74%) Azure Engineer
5 593 (8.33%) Lead
6 550 (7.73%) Data Engineer
7 430 (6.04%) Analyst
8 397 (5.58%) Solutions Architect
9 332 (4.66%) DevOps Engineer
10 311 (4.37%) Cloud Engineer
11 275 (3.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 272 (3.82%) Consultant
13 214 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 189 (2.65%) Platform Engineer
15 179 (2.51%) Azure Architect
16 177 (2.49%) Security Engineer
17 163 (2.29%) Project Manager
18 160 (2.25%) Technical Architect
19 159 (2.23%) Business Analyst
20 157 (2.21%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 539 (7.57%) .NET
2 494 (6.94%) REST
3 278 (3.91%) Kafka
4 271 (3.81%) React
5 230 (3.23%) PySpark
6 228 (3.20%) RESTful
7 214 (3.01%) OAuth
8 167 (2.35%) JSON
9 165 (2.32%) Spring
10 162 (2.28%) Node.js
11 154 (2.16%) AngularJS
12 138 (1.94%) SAML
13 134 (1.88%) OpenID
14 131 (1.84%) Spring Boot
15 124 (1.74%) .NET Framework
16 121 (1.70%) HTML
17 120 (1.69%) OAuth2
18 116 (1.63%) Middleware
19 113 (1.59%) SOAP
20 100 (1.40%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 762 (10.70%) Cloud Native
2 342 (4.80%) Onboarding
3 294 (4.13%) Product Ownership
4 237 (3.33%) Distributed Systems
5 229 (3.22%) Hybrid Cloud
6 227 (3.19%) Data Centre
7 204 (2.87%) AI Agents
7 204 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
8 165 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
9 158 (2.22%) Security Posture
10 130 (1.83%) Data Structures
11 122 (1.71%) Public Cloud
12 116 (1.63%) Management Information System
13 94 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
14 91 (1.28%) Enterprise Cloud
14 91 (1.28%) PKI
15 76 (1.07%) Replication
16 75 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
17 67 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
18 60 (0.84%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 846 (11.88%) Windows
2 409 (5.75%) Linux
3 281 (3.95%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.56%) Windows 10
5 76 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 75 (1.05%) Unix
7 67 (0.94%) Android
8 64 (0.90%) Mac OS
9 59 (0.83%) Apple iOS
10 46 (0.65%) Ubuntu
11 45 (0.63%) VMS
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.15%) CentOS
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.084%) AIX
17 6 (0.084%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.070%) Amazon Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,595 (36.45%) DevOps
2 2,196 (30.85%) CI/CD
3 1,788 (25.12%) Agile
4 1,154 (16.21%) AI
5 1,104 (15.51%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,045 (14.68%) Migration
7 1,034 (14.52%) Analytics
8 1,026 (14.41%) Stakeholder Management
9 948 (13.32%) Problem-Solving
10 810 (11.38%) Data Modelling
11 777 (10.91%) Continuous Improvement
12 707 (9.93%) Data Pipeline
13 687 (9.65%) Business Intelligence
14 684 (9.61%) Roadmaps
15 678 (9.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 637 (8.95%) Containerisation
17 606 (8.51%) ETL
17 606 (8.51%) Microservices
18 598 (8.40%) Data Engineering
19 570 (8.01%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,670 (23.46%) Python
2 1,424 (20.00%) SQL
3 740 (10.39%) PowerShell
4 582 (8.18%) Java
5 535 (7.52%) C#
6 417 (5.86%) JavaScript
7 321 (4.51%) Bash
8 277 (3.89%) Bicep
9 251 (3.53%) TypeScript
10 92 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.90%) Go
13 50 (0.70%) Scala
14 46 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
15 42 (0.59%) Shell Script
16 36 (0.51%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.48%) R
18 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
19 28 (0.39%) Groovy
20 26 (0.37%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,798 (25.26%) Security Cleared
2 1,456 (20.45%) SC Cleared
3 526 (7.39%) Degree
4 387 (5.44%) Azure Certification
5 237 (3.33%) DV Cleared
6 226 (3.17%) CISSP
7 200 (2.81%) Microsoft Certification
8 186 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
9 178 (2.50%) AWS Certification
10 171 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
11 155 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
12 108 (1.52%) CISM
13 92 (1.29%) CCNP
14 72 (1.01%) PMP
15 69 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.96%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 54 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 51 (0.72%) ISTQB
19 48 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 44 (0.62%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 500 (7.02%) Data Quality
2 377 (5.30%) QA
3 282 (3.96%) GDPR
4 258 (3.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 257 (3.61%) NIST
6 169 (2.37%) Accessibility
7 97 (1.36%) SLA
8 93 (1.31%) NCSC
9 70 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 69 (0.97%) GRC
10 69 (0.97%) WCAG
11 68 (0.96%) PCI DSS
12 53 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 52 (0.73%) PMO
14 33 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 28 (0.39%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
17 22 (0.31%) NIST 800
18 16 (0.22%) COBIT
19 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 875 (12.29%) Active Directory
2 764 (10.73%) Docker
3 192 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 134 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
5 133 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
6 95 (1.33%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.86%) vSphere
8 50 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.49%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.41%) Firmware
11 23 (0.32%) NFS
12 16 (0.22%) Postfix
13 13 (0.18%) IAG
14 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.098%) Varnish
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.070%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.070%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.056%) Embedded Firmware
Systems Management
1 1,171 (16.45%) Terraform
2 1,038 (14.58%) Kubernetes
3 385 (5.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 366 (5.14%) Ansible
5 217 (3.05%) Grafana
6 179 (2.51%) Prometheus
7 128 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 104 (1.46%) SCCM
9 52 (0.73%) Progress Chef
10 50 (0.70%) Argo
11 44 (0.62%) Puppet
12 40 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 27 (0.38%) Istio
16 20 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) Packer
18 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 18 (0.25%) SCOM
19 13 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,374 (33.35%) Microsoft
2 665 (9.34%) Databricks
3 367 (5.16%) ServiceNow
4 282 (3.96%) VMware
5 278 (3.91%) Google
5 278 (3.91%) Oracle
6 216 (3.03%) Cisco
7 197 (2.77%) SAP
8 167 (2.35%) OpenAI
9 162 (2.28%) Splunk
10 143 (2.01%) Palo Alto
11 138 (1.94%) CyberArk
12 131 (1.84%) Salesforce
13 118 (1.66%) Foundry
14 102 (1.43%) Dynatrace
15 91 (1.28%) Zscaler
16 70 (0.98%) Okta
17 68 (0.96%) Fortinet
17 68 (0.96%) Informatica
18 65 (0.91%) Red Hat