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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,921 4,071 5,254
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.48% 15.09% 14.10%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.25% 40.23% 42.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,872 2,823 3,847
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £423 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £525
% change year-on-year +0.43% -0.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 35 48
10th Percentile £23.00 £25.40 £17.80
25th Percentile £38.25 £28.20 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £42.34
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +6.28% -29.84%
75th Percentile £80.00 £76.72 £61.60
90th Percentile £100.85 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -0.86% +25.60% -23.38%

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 15,642 10,119 12,234
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.98% 37.50% 32.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,520 6,814 8,731
10th Percentile £325 £313 £308
25th Percentile £416 £410 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £517 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +2.34% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 558 268 329
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.00 £14.15
25th Percentile £22.63 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.53 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +61.15% +14.32% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £42.33 £43.75
90th Percentile £84.13 £67.15 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £27.63 £22.00
% change year-on-year +35.72% +25.59% -37.14%

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 9 July 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 9 July 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 9 July 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 3,624 £550 - 1,313
North of England +7 1,016 £500 +5.26% 639
South East +2 860 £520 +4.00% 704
Midlands +3 611 £500 +1.01% 295
North West +8 532 £500 +1.63% 355
West Midlands +1 457 £500 -4.76% 181
South West +7 442 £540 +8.00% 428
Yorkshire +4 403 £501 +5.37% 195
East of England +5 186 £550 - 175
East Midlands +4 143 £500 +8.11% 113
North East +4 94 £525 +5.00% 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
1 344 (4.97%) SharePoint
2 222 (3.21%) Confluence
3 175 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 169 (2.44%) Apache Spark
5 119 (1.72%) Apache Airflow
6 112 (1.62%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 25 (0.36%) IIS
9 19 (0.27%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 10 (0.14%) Camunda
12 8 (0.12%) Umbraco
13 7 (0.10%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.087%) Appian
14 6 (0.087%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.087%) Documentum
14 6 (0.087%) Mendix
15 5 (0.072%) Tomcat
Applications
1 104 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 64 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
2 64 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
3 36 (0.52%) MS Visio
4 27 (0.39%) Chatbot
4 27 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (0.20%) AutoCAD
6 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
7 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
8 8 (0.12%) Revit
9 5 (0.072%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.072%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.058%) Notion
10 4 (0.058%) Trello
11 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.014%) Houdini
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
12 1 (0.014%) NUKE
12 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 96 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.10%) Magento
7 7 (0.10%) Maximo
7 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.087%) Endur
8 6 (0.087%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.087%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.087%) Shopify
8 6 (0.087%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.072%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.058%) Quorum
10 4 (0.058%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.058%) Ripple
10 4 (0.058%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,451 (35.41%) AWS
2 1,405 (20.30%) Azure DevOps
3 1,156 (16.70%) GCP
4 893 (12.90%) Entra ID
5 876 (12.66%) Power Platform
6 697 (10.07%) Microsoft 365
7 624 (9.02%) GitHub
8 423 (6.11%) Azure Data Factory
9 376 (5.43%) GitHub Actions
10 315 (4.55%) Serverless
11 290 (4.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 287 (4.15%) SaaS
13 248 (3.58%) Azure AKS
14 233 (3.37%) Power Automate
15 230 (3.32%) Azure Monitor
16 224 (3.24%) PaaS
17 217 (3.14%) Dynamics 365
18 206 (2.98%) PowerApps
19 204 (2.95%) Snowflake
20 187 (2.70%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 434 (6.27%) Firewall
2 330 (4.77%) DNS
3 264 (3.81%) VPN
4 236 (3.41%) Network Security
5 191 (2.76%) WAN
6 173 (2.50%) DHCP
7 121 (1.75%) LAN
7 121 (1.75%) TCP/IP
8 105 (1.52%) BGP
9 98 (1.42%) SD-WAN
10 83 (1.20%) OSPF
11 74 (1.07%) VLAN
12 68 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
13 57 (0.82%) SSL
14 55 (0.79%) Kerberos
15 52 (0.75%) SAN
16 44 (0.64%) Wireless
17 42 (0.61%) IPsec
17 42 (0.61%) VXLAN
18 38 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 610 (8.81%) Power BI
2 414 (5.98%) SQL Server
3 344 (4.97%) Data Warehouse
4 300 (4.33%) Data Lake
5 246 (3.55%) PostgreSQL
6 178 (2.57%) NoSQL
7 177 (2.56%) Azure SQL Database
8 162 (2.34%) Metadata
9 127 (1.83%) Delta Lake
10 115 (1.66%) Relational Database
11 94 (1.36%) Big Data
12 76 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.08%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.07%) Tableau
15 64 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.82%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.78%) Oracle Database
18 51 (0.74%) MySQL
19 48 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
20 47 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 511 (7.38%) JIRA
2 499 (7.21%) Git
3 330 (4.77%) Jenkins
4 252 (3.64%) GitLab
5 104 (1.50%) Selenium
6 60 (0.87%) Postman
7 57 (0.82%) JMeter
8 56 (0.81%) JUnit
9 52 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 44 (0.64%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.59%) SonarQube
12 37 (0.53%) MLflow
12 37 (0.53%) WebDriver
13 36 (0.52%) Cypress.io
14 35 (0.51%) Visual Studio
15 29 (0.42%) Maven
16 26 (0.38%) Gatling
17 25 (0.36%) LoadRunner
17 25 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
18 22 (0.32%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,737 (25.10%) Social Skills
2 1,352 (19.53%) Finance
3 723 (10.45%) Public Sector
4 662 (9.57%) Analytical Skills
5 397 (5.74%) Banking
6 198 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 164 (2.37%) Legal
8 159 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 158 (2.28%) Retail
10 93 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
11 75 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
12 68 (0.98%) Investment Banking
13 67 (0.97%) Front Office
14 66 (0.95%) Law
15 64 (0.92%) Telecoms
16 63 (0.91%) Financial Institution
17 62 (0.90%) Marketing
18 58 (0.84%) Manufacturing
19 55 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
20 47 (0.68%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,234 (17.83%) Architect
2 865 (12.50%) Senior
3 836 (12.08%) Developer
4 600 (8.67%) Azure Engineer
5 548 (7.92%) Data Engineer
6 539 (7.79%) Lead
7 423 (6.11%) Analyst
8 364 (5.26%) Solutions Architect
9 327 (4.72%) DevOps Engineer
10 289 (4.18%) Consultant
11 278 (4.02%) Cloud Engineer
12 242 (3.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 196 (2.83%) Data Architect
14 188 (2.72%) Azure Architect
15 177 (2.56%) Platform Engineer
16 169 (2.44%) Security Engineer
17 165 (2.38%) Technical Architect
18 160 (2.31%) Business Analyst
19 148 (2.14%) Senior Developer
20 146 (2.11%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 524 (7.57%) .NET
2 462 (6.68%) REST
3 270 (3.90%) React
4 269 (3.89%) Kafka
5 221 (3.19%) PySpark
6 216 (3.12%) RESTful
7 211 (3.05%) OAuth
8 175 (2.53%) Spring
9 173 (2.50%) Node.js
10 160 (2.31%) AngularJS
11 149 (2.15%) JSON
12 145 (2.10%) Spring Boot
13 139 (2.01%) SAML
14 131 (1.89%) LDAP
15 129 (1.86%) OpenID
16 121 (1.75%) HTML
17 115 (1.66%) .NET Framework
18 111 (1.60%) SOAP
19 109 (1.57%) OAuth2
20 108 (1.56%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 744 (10.75%) Cloud Native
2 304 (4.39%) Onboarding
3 269 (3.89%) Product Ownership
4 219 (3.16%) Distributed Systems
5 218 (3.15%) Data Centre
6 209 (3.02%) Hybrid Cloud
7 200 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
8 162 (2.34%) AI Agents
9 146 (2.11%) Security Posture
10 139 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
11 128 (1.85%) Public Cloud
12 104 (1.50%) Data Structures
13 97 (1.40%) Management Information System
14 92 (1.33%) Replication
15 89 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
16 78 (1.13%) PKI
17 77 (1.11%) Enterprise Cloud
18 71 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
19 64 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
20 57 (0.82%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 822 (11.88%) Windows
2 358 (5.17%) Linux
3 262 (3.79%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.53%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.07%) Unix
6 65 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 64 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.85%) Android
8 59 (0.85%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.64%) VMS
10 37 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 10 (0.14%) Debian
17 6 (0.087%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.087%) Rocky
17 6 (0.087%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,526 (36.50%) DevOps
2 2,140 (30.92%) CI/CD
3 1,676 (24.22%) Agile
4 1,094 (15.81%) AI
5 1,043 (15.07%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,015 (14.67%) Analytics
7 995 (14.38%) Migration
8 945 (13.65%) Problem-Solving
9 859 (12.41%) Stakeholder Management
10 780 (11.27%) Data Modelling
11 704 (10.17%) Continuous Improvement
12 694 (10.03%) Data Pipeline
13 679 (9.81%) Roadmaps
14 656 (9.48%) Business Intelligence
15 628 (9.07%) Containerisation
16 609 (8.80%) ETL
17 597 (8.63%) Microservices
18 596 (8.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 585 (8.45%) Data Engineering
20 539 (7.79%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,640 (23.70%) Python
2 1,418 (20.49%) SQL
3 698 (10.09%) PowerShell
4 578 (8.35%) Java
5 534 (7.72%) C#
6 378 (5.46%) JavaScript
7 260 (3.76%) Bash
8 253 (3.66%) TypeScript
9 235 (3.40%) Bicep
10 89 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 76 (1.10%) Go
13 70 (1.01%) Scala
14 47 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.52%) R
15 36 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 30 (0.43%) Kotlin
17 28 (0.40%) PL/SQL
18 24 (0.35%) Groovy
19 21 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,724 (24.91%) Security Cleared
2 1,412 (20.40%) SC Cleared
3 510 (7.37%) Degree
4 366 (5.29%) Azure Certification
5 220 (3.18%) CISSP
6 208 (3.01%) DV Cleared
7 182 (2.63%) Microsoft Certification
8 178 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
9 175 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
10 159 (2.30%) AWS Certification
11 143 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
12 106 (1.53%) CISM
13 83 (1.20%) CCNP
14 69 (1.00%) PMP
15 65 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 63 (0.91%) PMI Certification
17 53 (0.77%) Master's Degree
18 51 (0.74%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 485 (7.01%) Data Quality
2 358 (5.17%) QA
3 303 (4.38%) GDPR
4 250 (3.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 241 (3.48%) NIST
6 150 (2.17%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.39%) NCSC
8 87 (1.26%) SLA
9 71 (1.03%) PCI DSS
10 69 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
11 61 (0.88%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 59 (0.85%) WCAG
13 56 (0.81%) GRC
14 42 (0.61%) PMO
15 35 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.35%) SOC 2
18 23 (0.33%) NIST 800
19 16 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 16 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 868 (12.54%) Active Directory
2 721 (10.42%) Docker
3 196 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 129 (1.86%) Virtual Desktop
5 126 (1.82%) Virtual Machines
6 90 (1.30%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.91%) vSphere
8 51 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.40%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.14%) IAG
15 8 (0.12%) Varnish
16 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.087%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.072%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
18 5 (0.072%) RACF
18 5 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,118 (16.15%) Terraform
2 981 (14.17%) Kubernetes
3 381 (5.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 325 (4.70%) Ansible
5 202 (2.92%) Grafana
6 167 (2.41%) Prometheus
7 147 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 95 (1.37%) SCCM
9 66 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
11 42 (0.61%) Progress Chef
12 41 (0.59%) Argo
13 39 (0.56%) Puppet
14 33 (0.48%) FortiGate
15 28 (0.40%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) HAProxy
18 17 (0.25%) Packer
19 16 (0.23%) HP ALM
20 13 (0.19%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,263 (32.70%) Microsoft
2 641 (9.26%) Databricks
3 347 (5.01%) ServiceNow
4 273 (3.94%) Oracle
5 271 (3.92%) VMware
6 256 (3.70%) Google
7 198 (2.86%) SAP
8 189 (2.73%) Cisco
9 169 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 143 (2.07%) Splunk
11 132 (1.91%) Salesforce
12 130 (1.88%) Palo Alto
13 124 (1.79%) CyberArk
14 120 (1.73%) Foundry
15 90 (1.30%) Dynatrace
16 89 (1.29%) Okta
17 78 (1.13%) Zscaler
18 69 (1.00%) Informatica
19 66 (0.95%) Citrix
20 63 (0.91%) Fortinet