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

6 months to
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,250 3,741 4,934
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.34% 15.39% 13.39%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.45% 41.41% 42.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,492 2,649 3,631
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -2.68%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 24 47
10th Percentile £27.24 £21.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £52.25 £26.45 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -40.32%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.75 £93.61 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £36.25 £35.00
% change year-on-year +58.62% +3.57% -41.57%

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 14,383 9,035 11,733
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.29% 37.18% 31.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,880 6,303 8,471
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £518 £525
% change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 465 195 321
10th Percentile £15.96 £15.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.21 £17.96 £15.85
Median hourly rate £45.50 £26.45 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +72.02% +25.95% -34.98%
75th Percentile £68.75 £40.99 £33.25
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.25 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £40.64 £27.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +47.78% +28.69% -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 9 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 9 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 9 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 3,335 £537 -2.36% 990
North of England +3 854 £500 +5.26% 565
South East +2 831 £500 -4.76% 661
Midlands -3 509 £488 -2.50% 281
North West +3 449 £500 +0.81% 301
South West +6 384 £525 - 255
West Midlands 0 370 £500 -4.76% 159
Yorkshire +7 348 £500 +14.29% 172
East of England +2 148 £550 -5.17% 174
East Midlands +3 129 £450 -3.23% 121
North East -1 66 £525 +7.69% 92
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
1 290 (4.64%) SharePoint
2 175 (2.80%) Confluence
3 173 (2.77%) Apache Spark
4 171 (2.74%) Microsoft Exchange
5 90 (1.44%) Apache
6 85 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) IIS
8 18 (0.29%) SAS
9 13 (0.21%) ArcGIS
9 13 (0.21%) Mendix
10 12 (0.19%) Appian
10 12 (0.19%) Camunda
10 12 (0.19%) CMS
10 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
10 12 (0.19%) OpenStack
11 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 5 (0.080%) BizTalk Server
13 5 (0.080%) Jupyter
13 5 (0.080%) WebLogic
Applications
1 90 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 21 (0.34%) 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
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.032%) Weka
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 92 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 5 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.080%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.064%) Cloudability
9 4 (0.064%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.064%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.064%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.064%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.064%) Shopify
9 4 (0.064%) SimCorp Dimension
10 3 (0.048%) Elite 3E
10 3 (0.048%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,168 (34.69%) AWS
2 1,277 (20.43%) Azure DevOps
3 1,153 (18.45%) GCP
4 802 (12.83%) Power Platform
5 769 (12.30%) Entra ID
6 649 (10.38%) Microsoft 365
7 581 (9.30%) GitHub
8 460 (7.36%) Azure Data Factory
9 331 (5.30%) GitHub Actions
10 316 (5.06%) Serverless
11 303 (4.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 250 (4.00%) SaaS
13 236 (3.78%) Azure AKS
14 230 (3.68%) Dynamics 365
15 214 (3.42%) Power Automate
16 213 (3.41%) PaaS
17 206 (3.30%) Azure Monitor
18 174 (2.78%) Azure Functions
19 172 (2.75%) Azure Logic Apps
19 172 (2.75%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 389 (6.22%) Firewall
2 271 (4.34%) DNS
3 227 (3.63%) VPN
4 206 (3.30%) Network Security
5 164 (2.62%) WAN
6 149 (2.38%) DHCP
7 116 (1.86%) LAN
8 85 (1.36%) TCP/IP
9 82 (1.31%) SD-WAN
10 75 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
11 70 (1.12%) VLAN
12 66 (1.06%) Kerberos
13 63 (1.01%) BGP
14 54 (0.86%) OSPF
15 44 (0.70%) SAN
16 40 (0.64%) Wireless
17 38 (0.61%) SSL
18 33 (0.53%) HTTP
19 29 (0.46%) VXLAN
20 28 (0.45%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 559 (8.94%) Power BI
2 371 (5.94%) SQL Server
3 329 (5.26%) Data Warehouse
4 306 (4.90%) Data Lake
5 210 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
6 199 (3.18%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.72%) NoSQL
8 147 (2.35%) Metadata
9 139 (2.22%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.55%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.42%) Big Data
12 88 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 78 (1.25%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.17%) Tableau
15 66 (1.06%) Oracle Database
16 61 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.75%) Star Schema
19 46 (0.74%) Spark SQL
20 43 (0.69%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 462 (7.39%) Git
2 432 (6.91%) JIRA
3 306 (4.90%) Jenkins
4 236 (3.78%) GitLab
5 95 (1.52%) Selenium
6 60 (0.96%) Postman
7 51 (0.82%) JUnit
8 50 (0.80%) MLflow
9 49 (0.78%) Cucumber
10 45 (0.72%) JMeter
11 39 (0.62%) REST Assured
12 37 (0.59%) SonarQube
13 33 (0.53%) Artifactory
14 30 (0.48%) Cypress.io
15 24 (0.38%) Gatling
15 24 (0.38%) Maven
15 24 (0.38%) Visual Studio
15 24 (0.38%) WebDriver
16 23 (0.37%) Bitbucket
17 22 (0.35%) TestRail
General
1 1,626 (26.02%) Social Skills
2 1,183 (18.93%) Finance
3 642 (10.27%) Public Sector
4 588 (9.41%) Analytical Skills
5 361 (5.78%) Banking
6 187 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
7 146 (2.34%) Legal
8 98 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 88 (1.41%) Retail
10 85 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.10%) Financial Institution
11 69 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
12 63 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
12 63 (1.01%) Investment Banking
13 62 (0.99%) Front Office
13 62 (0.99%) Marketing
14 61 (0.98%) Law
15 52 (0.83%) Telecoms
16 38 (0.61%) Local Government
16 38 (0.61%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,033 (16.53%) Architect
2 767 (12.27%) Developer
3 759 (12.14%) Senior
4 574 (9.18%) Azure Engineer
5 534 (8.54%) Data Engineer
6 462 (7.39%) Lead
7 398 (6.37%) Analyst
8 322 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 274 (4.38%) Solutions Architect
10 252 (4.03%) Consultant
11 209 (3.34%) Cloud Engineer
12 196 (3.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 167 (2.67%) Azure Architect
14 162 (2.59%) Security Engineer
15 150 (2.40%) Platform Engineer
16 142 (2.27%) Technical Architect
17 138 (2.21%) Data Architect
18 137 (2.19%) Business Analyst
19 136 (2.18%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 131 (2.10%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (7.50%) .NET
2 395 (6.32%) REST
3 252 (4.03%) Kafka
4 251 (4.02%) React
5 227 (3.63%) PySpark
6 195 (3.12%) Node.js
7 180 (2.88%) RESTful
8 173 (2.77%) Spring
9 171 (2.74%) OAuth
10 164 (2.62%) LDAP
11 158 (2.53%) AngularJS
12 140 (2.24%) Spring Boot
13 124 (1.98%) Middleware
14 120 (1.92%) JSON
15 119 (1.90%) SAML
15 119 (1.90%) SOAP
16 115 (1.84%) HTML
17 109 (1.74%) OpenID
18 100 (1.60%) YAML
19 96 (1.54%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 612 (9.79%) Cloud Native
2 251 (4.02%) Onboarding
3 218 (3.49%) Product Ownership
4 178 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 164 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
6 159 (2.54%) Data Centre
7 144 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
7 144 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
7 144 (2.30%) Security Posture
8 133 (2.13%) Public Cloud
9 116 (1.86%) AI Agents
10 86 (1.38%) Data Structures
11 85 (1.36%) Replication
12 69 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
12 69 (1.10%) Management Information System
13 60 (0.96%) PKI
14 56 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
14 56 (0.90%) Low-Code
15 51 (0.82%) Virtual Team
16 49 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 707 (11.31%) Windows
2 317 (5.07%) Linux
3 207 (3.31%) Windows Server
4 113 (1.81%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.06%) Unix
6 58 (0.93%) VMS
7 56 (0.90%) Mac OS
8 52 (0.83%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 37 (0.59%) Android
11 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.30%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.14%) AIX
17 8 (0.13%) CentOS
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
19 6 (0.096%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,336 (37.38%) DevOps
2 1,928 (30.85%) CI/CD
3 1,446 (23.14%) Agile
4 945 (15.12%) Analytics
5 931 (14.90%) Problem-Solving
6 885 (14.16%) Infrastructure as Code
7 881 (14.10%) AI
8 842 (13.47%) Migration
9 714 (11.42%) Data Modelling
10 633 (10.13%) Stakeholder Management
11 621 (9.94%) Data Pipeline
12 620 (9.92%) Business Intelligence
13 600 (9.60%) Continuous Improvement
14 595 (9.52%) ETL
15 588 (9.41%) Containerisation
16 543 (8.69%) Microservices
17 538 (8.61%) Data Engineering
18 532 (8.51%) Roadmaps
19 504 (8.06%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 469 (7.50%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,536 (24.58%) Python
2 1,362 (21.79%) SQL
3 667 (10.67%) PowerShell
4 524 (8.38%) Java
5 519 (8.30%) C#
6 369 (5.90%) JavaScript
7 224 (3.58%) Bash
8 220 (3.52%) TypeScript
9 196 (3.14%) Bicep
10 91 (1.46%) Scala
11 84 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 77 (1.23%) Go
13 75 (1.20%) T-SQL
14 51 (0.82%) Kusto Query Language
14 51 (0.82%) PL/SQL
15 44 (0.70%) R
16 36 (0.58%) Shell Script
17 24 (0.38%) C++
18 21 (0.34%) Kotlin
19 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,600 (25.60%) Security Cleared
2 1,337 (21.39%) SC Cleared
3 443 (7.09%) Degree
4 353 (5.65%) Azure Certification
5 178 (2.85%) CISSP
6 174 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
7 143 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 142 (2.27%) Cisco Certification
9 136 (2.18%) DV Cleared
10 130 (2.08%) AWS Certification
11 103 (1.65%) CISM
12 102 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
13 67 (1.07%) CCNP
14 61 (0.98%) PMP
15 58 (0.93%) PMI Certification
16 55 (0.88%) TOGAF Certification
17 54 (0.86%) Master's Degree
18 52 (0.83%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 49 (0.78%) ISTQB
20 36 (0.58%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (7.18%) Data Quality
2 335 (5.36%) QA
3 329 (5.26%) GDPR
4 258 (4.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 235 (3.76%) NIST
6 93 (1.49%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.33%) NCSC
8 80 (1.28%) PCI DSS
9 63 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
10 60 (0.96%) SLA
11 59 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 51 (0.82%) PMO
13 45 (0.72%) GRC
14 34 (0.54%) HIPAA
15 31 (0.50%) WCAG
16 23 (0.37%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 20 (0.32%) ISO 20022
19 17 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 17 (0.27%) PSD2
System Software
1 812 (12.99%) Active Directory
2 689 (11.02%) Docker
3 180 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.74%) Virtual Machines
5 107 (1.71%) Virtual Desktop
6 92 (1.47%) Hyper-V
7 53 (0.85%) vSphere
8 34 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.42%) Firmware
10 20 (0.32%) NFS
11 19 (0.30%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.19%) Postfix
13 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.096%) KVM
15 6 (0.096%) RACF
16 5 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.080%) HDFS
16 5 (0.080%) Snort
17 4 (0.064%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 987 (15.79%) Terraform
2 910 (14.56%) Kubernetes
3 333 (5.33%) Microsoft Intune
4 280 (4.48%) Ansible
5 172 (2.75%) Grafana
6 147 (2.35%) Prometheus
7 133 (2.13%) Single Sign-On
8 101 (1.62%) SCCM
9 66 (1.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.56%) Argo
11 34 (0.54%) Istio
12 33 (0.53%) Puppet
13 29 (0.46%) Progress Chef
14 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
15 22 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
16 19 (0.30%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.24%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.24%) Kubeflow
18 15 (0.24%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,037 (32.59%) Microsoft
2 626 (10.02%) Databricks
3 276 (4.42%) ServiceNow
4 269 (4.30%) Oracle
5 260 (4.16%) Google
6 253 (4.05%) VMware
7 183 (2.93%) SAP
8 160 (2.56%) Cisco
9 158 (2.53%) OpenAI
10 140 (2.24%) Splunk
11 136 (2.18%) CyberArk
12 104 (1.66%) Palo Alto
13 102 (1.63%) Foundry
14 92 (1.47%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.26%) Okta
16 70 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
17 69 (1.10%) Citrix
18 67 (1.07%) Dynatrace
19 63 (1.01%) Informatica
20 61 (0.98%) Zscaler