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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,054 3,845 4,953
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.42% 15.76% 13.27%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.82% 41.87% 41.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,365 2,733 3,651
10th Percentile £358 £353 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.20%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £646
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 28 50
10th Percentile £25.47 £23.74 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.78 £26.45 £22.53
Median hourly rate £57.50 £57.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.88% +62.86% -35.39%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.49 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £86.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% - -36.36%

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 14,139 9,184 11,934
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.01% 37.63% 31.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,757 6,438 8,584
10th Percentile £313 £313 £281
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 434 186 319
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.24 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.22 £15.87
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.50 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +69.81% +27.59% -24.47%
75th Percentile £67.84 £42.74 £32.63
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.25 £59.96
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £27.63 £21.00
% change year-on-year +53.82% +31.57% -30.86%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 3,255 £537 -2.32% 993
North of England +3 828 £500 +5.26% 561
South East +2 775 £500 -4.76% 647
Midlands -3 500 £488 -6.25% 306
North West +3 448 £500 - 283
West Midlands 0 366 £500 -4.76% 176
South West +6 362 £500 -4.76% 247
Yorkshire 0 338 £500 +17.65% 196
East of England +4 152 £550 -8.33% 209
East Midlands +1 125 £449 -5.58% 129
North East -5 49 £525 +3.70% 86
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
1 282 (4.66%) SharePoint
2 174 (2.87%) Microsoft Exchange
3 173 (2.86%) Apache Spark
4 168 (2.78%) Confluence
5 96 (1.59%) Apache
6 87 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) SAS
8 20 (0.33%) IIS
9 16 (0.26%) OpenStack
10 15 (0.25%) Appian
11 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.23%) Camunda
12 12 (0.20%) CMS
13 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.18%) Mendix
14 9 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
15 8 (0.13%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
17 5 (0.083%) BizTalk Server
17 5 (0.083%) WebLogic
Applications
1 108 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.083%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.083%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.066%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.066%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.066%) Weka
11 3 (0.050%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) Revit
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 103 (1.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.083%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.066%) Dynamics AX
9 4 (0.066%) Elite 3E
9 4 (0.066%) Endur
9 4 (0.066%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.066%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.066%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.050%) Cloudability
10 3 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
10 3 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
10 3 (0.050%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,102 (34.72%) AWS
2 1,261 (20.83%) Azure DevOps
3 1,155 (19.08%) GCP
4 800 (13.21%) Power Platform
5 765 (12.64%) Entra ID
6 660 (10.90%) Microsoft 365
7 583 (9.63%) GitHub
8 460 (7.60%) Azure Data Factory
9 333 (5.50%) GitHub Actions
10 328 (5.42%) Serverless
11 298 (4.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 253 (4.18%) SaaS
13 239 (3.95%) Dynamics 365
14 227 (3.75%) Azure AKS
15 218 (3.60%) Azure Monitor
16 211 (3.49%) Power Automate
17 210 (3.47%) PaaS
18 190 (3.14%) Azure Functions
19 186 (3.07%) Azure Logic Apps
20 174 (2.87%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 385 (6.36%) Firewall
2 271 (4.48%) DNS
3 233 (3.85%) VPN
4 200 (3.30%) Network Security
5 154 (2.54%) WAN
6 150 (2.48%) DHCP
7 120 (1.98%) LAN
8 91 (1.50%) TCP/IP
9 75 (1.24%) VLAN
10 73 (1.21%) SD-WAN
10 73 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
11 65 (1.07%) Kerberos
12 49 (0.81%) BGP
13 43 (0.71%) OSPF
14 39 (0.64%) Wireless
15 37 (0.61%) SAN
16 36 (0.59%) SSL
17 35 (0.58%) HTTP
18 32 (0.53%) Internet
19 29 (0.48%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 554 (9.15%) Power BI
2 365 (6.03%) SQL Server
3 334 (5.52%) Data Warehouse
4 290 (4.79%) Data Lake
5 213 (3.52%) Azure SQL Database
5 213 (3.52%) PostgreSQL
6 182 (3.01%) NoSQL
7 147 (2.43%) Metadata
8 132 (2.18%) Delta Lake
9 98 (1.62%) Relational Database
10 92 (1.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 84 (1.39%) Big Data
12 78 (1.29%) Tableau
13 77 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 61 (1.01%) Oracle Database
15 58 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
16 54 (0.89%) BigQuery
17 47 (0.78%) Star Schema
18 46 (0.76%) MySQL
19 45 (0.74%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 447 (7.38%) Git
2 421 (6.95%) JIRA
3 303 (5.00%) Jenkins
4 219 (3.62%) GitLab
5 106 (1.75%) Selenium
6 67 (1.11%) Postman
7 57 (0.94%) JUnit
8 56 (0.93%) Cucumber
9 49 (0.81%) JMeter
9 49 (0.81%) MLflow
10 42 (0.69%) REST Assured
11 35 (0.58%) Cypress.io
12 34 (0.56%) Artifactory
12 34 (0.56%) SonarQube
13 33 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
14 28 (0.46%) TestRail
15 26 (0.43%) Visual Studio
16 23 (0.38%) Gatling
16 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
17 21 (0.35%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,647 (27.21%) Social Skills
2 1,130 (18.67%) Finance
3 631 (10.42%) Public Sector
4 606 (10.01%) Analytical Skills
5 350 (5.78%) Banking
6 193 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
7 138 (2.28%) Legal
8 100 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 86 (1.42%) Retail
10 84 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
11 77 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
12 73 (1.21%) Presentation Skills
13 65 (1.07%) Financial Institution
13 65 (1.07%) Marketing
14 64 (1.06%) Law
15 61 (1.01%) Telecoms
16 57 (0.94%) Front Office
16 57 (0.94%) Investment Banking
17 44 (0.73%) Local Government
18 35 (0.58%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 999 (16.50%) Architect
2 789 (13.03%) Developer
3 734 (12.12%) Senior
4 557 (9.20%) Azure Engineer
5 520 (8.59%) Data Engineer
6 456 (7.53%) Lead
7 386 (6.38%) Analyst
8 300 (4.96%) DevOps Engineer
9 257 (4.25%) Solutions Architect
10 244 (4.03%) Consultant
11 183 (3.02%) Cloud Engineer
12 175 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 159 (2.63%) Platform Engineer
14 154 (2.54%) Azure Architect
15 146 (2.41%) Security Engineer
16 136 (2.25%) Senior Developer
17 132 (2.18%) Data Architect
18 129 (2.13%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 126 (2.08%) Technical Architect
20 125 (2.06%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 458 (7.57%) .NET
2 389 (6.43%) REST
3 264 (4.36%) React
4 248 (4.10%) Kafka
5 230 (3.80%) PySpark
6 213 (3.52%) Node.js
7 189 (3.12%) RESTful
8 183 (3.02%) Spring
9 177 (2.92%) OAuth
10 163 (2.69%) AngularJS
11 148 (2.44%) LDAP
12 146 (2.41%) Spring Boot
13 122 (2.02%) HTML
13 122 (2.02%) Middleware
14 120 (1.98%) JSON
15 117 (1.93%) SAML
16 112 (1.85%) SOAP
17 104 (1.72%) CSS
17 104 (1.72%) PyTorch
17 104 (1.72%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 567 (9.37%) Cloud Native
2 237 (3.91%) Onboarding
3 216 (3.57%) Product Ownership
4 171 (2.82%) Hybrid Cloud
5 155 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
6 151 (2.49%) Security Posture
7 145 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
8 140 (2.31%) Data Centre
9 136 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
10 134 (2.21%) Public Cloud
11 105 (1.73%) AI Agents
12 83 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 82 (1.35%) Replication
14 67 (1.11%) Management Information System
15 64 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
16 59 (0.97%) PKI
17 58 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
18 48 (0.79%) Low-Code
19 47 (0.78%) Algorithms
20 46 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 672 (11.10%) Windows
2 311 (5.14%) Linux
3 206 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.90%) Windows 10
5 61 (1.01%) VMS
6 56 (0.93%) Unix
7 52 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 45 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.64%) Apple iOS
10 31 (0.51%) Android
11 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
11 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.28%) Ubuntu
13 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.099%) CentOS
17 5 (0.083%) AIX
17 5 (0.083%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.083%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,266 (37.43%) DevOps
2 1,850 (30.56%) CI/CD
3 1,418 (23.42%) Agile
4 967 (15.97%) Problem-Solving
5 925 (15.28%) Analytics
6 858 (14.17%) AI
7 838 (13.84%) Infrastructure as Code
8 812 (13.41%) Migration
9 697 (11.51%) Data Modelling
10 617 (10.19%) Business Intelligence
11 611 (10.09%) Stakeholder Management
12 590 (9.75%) Continuous Improvement
13 582 (9.61%) Data Pipeline
14 574 (9.48%) ETL
15 570 (9.42%) Containerisation
16 536 (8.85%) Data Engineering
16 536 (8.85%) Microservices
17 509 (8.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 487 (8.04%) Roadmaps
19 476 (7.86%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,539 (25.42%) Python
2 1,378 (22.76%) SQL
3 647 (10.69%) PowerShell
4 517 (8.54%) C#
5 511 (8.44%) Java
6 405 (6.69%) JavaScript
7 235 (3.88%) TypeScript
8 224 (3.70%) Bash
9 194 (3.20%) Bicep
10 101 (1.67%) Scala
11 75 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 75 (1.24%) Go
12 73 (1.21%) T-SQL
13 72 (1.19%) PL/SQL
14 62 (1.02%) Kusto Query Language
15 41 (0.68%) R
16 34 (0.56%) Shell Script
17 21 (0.35%) C++
18 20 (0.33%) PHP
19 16 (0.26%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,524 (25.17%) Security Cleared
2 1,265 (20.90%) SC Cleared
3 450 (7.43%) Degree
4 349 (5.76%) Azure Certification
5 191 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
6 162 (2.68%) CISSP
7 143 (2.36%) Microsoft Certification
8 125 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
9 121 (2.00%) DV Cleared
10 115 (1.90%) AWS Certification
11 98 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
12 93 (1.54%) CISM
13 68 (1.12%) CCNP
14 60 (0.99%) Master's Degree
15 58 (0.96%) PMP
16 55 (0.91%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.86%) ISTQB
17 52 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
18 41 (0.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 35 (0.58%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 441 (7.28%) Data Quality
2 343 (5.67%) GDPR
3 326 (5.38%) QA
4 250 (4.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 224 (3.70%) NIST
6 93 (1.54%) Accessibility
7 85 (1.40%) NCSC
8 81 (1.34%) PCI DSS
9 58 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 55 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 54 (0.89%) SLA
12 47 (0.78%) PMO
13 38 (0.63%) GRC
14 31 (0.51%) WCAG
15 27 (0.45%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.41%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 18 (0.30%) PSD2
20 17 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 796 (13.15%) Active Directory
2 692 (11.43%) Docker
3 187 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
5 90 (1.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 74 (1.22%) vSphere
8 35 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.53%) VMware NSX
10 23 (0.38%) Firmware
11 17 (0.28%) NFS
12 10 (0.17%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.099%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.099%) RACF
14 6 (0.099%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.099%) Varnish
15 5 (0.083%) GPFS
15 5 (0.083%) KVM
15 5 (0.083%) Snort
Systems Management
1 960 (15.86%) Terraform
2 903 (14.92%) Kubernetes
3 331 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
4 260 (4.29%) Ansible
5 158 (2.61%) Grafana
6 134 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
7 130 (2.15%) Prometheus
8 105 (1.73%) SCCM
9 69 (1.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.63%) Argo
11 34 (0.56%) Istio
12 30 (0.50%) Puppet
13 29 (0.48%) vCenter Server
14 26 (0.43%) Progress Chef
15 23 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
16 20 (0.33%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
18 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
18 16 (0.26%) Nmap
18 16 (0.26%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,973 (32.59%) Microsoft
2 629 (10.39%) Databricks
3 291 (4.81%) Oracle
4 279 (4.61%) Google
5 268 (4.43%) ServiceNow
6 257 (4.25%) VMware
7 178 (2.94%) SAP
8 163 (2.69%) Cisco
9 160 (2.64%) OpenAI
10 137 (2.26%) Splunk
11 130 (2.15%) CyberArk
12 105 (1.73%) Foundry
13 86 (1.42%) Palo Alto
14 80 (1.32%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.30%) Okta
16 70 (1.16%) IBM
17 67 (1.11%) BeyondTrust
18 65 (1.07%) Citrix
19 63 (1.04%) Red Hat
20 60 (0.99%) Informatica