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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,251 3,748 4,977
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.35% 15.38% 13.43%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.50% 41.34% 42.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,494 2,657 3,666
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £541
Median % change year-on-year - -3.00% -3.78%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £724 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 25 47
10th Percentile £26.81 £21.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £52.00 £26.45 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.75% +14.29% -36.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £91.48 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% - -39.13%

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 14,371 9,067 11,832
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.29% 37.20% 31.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,865 6,335 8,560
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.52% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £743 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.80% -1.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 459 197 320
10th Percentile £15.87 £15.05 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.84 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.45 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +70.13% +27.35% -31.90%
75th Percentile £68.29 £41.97 £32.50
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.00 £61.64
UK median hourly rate £40.25 £27.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +46.36% +30.95% -40.00%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 3,342 £537 -2.36% 1,077
North of England +2 847 £500 +5.26% 612
South East +2 821 £500 -5.93% 702
Midlands -2 514 £488 -2.50% 308
North West +3 451 £500 - 322
South West +6 387 £525 - 272
West Midlands 0 375 £500 -4.76% 169
Yorkshire +4 343 £500 +17.65% 191
East of England +4 149 £550 -5.17% 218
East Midlands +3 129 £450 -2.96% 138
North East 0 61 £525 +7.69% 100
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
1 291 (4.66%) SharePoint
2 174 (2.78%) Apache Spark
2 174 (2.78%) Microsoft Exchange
3 171 (2.74%) Confluence
4 93 (1.49%) Apache
5 85 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (0.34%) IIS
7 18 (0.29%) SAS
8 13 (0.21%) Appian
8 13 (0.21%) ArcGIS
8 13 (0.21%) Camunda
8 13 (0.21%) Mendix
9 12 (0.19%) CMS
9 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
9 12 (0.19%) OpenStack
10 9 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
11 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 5 (0.080%) BizTalk Server
12 5 (0.080%) Jupyter
12 5 (0.080%) WebLogic
Applications
1 98 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 82 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 61 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.32%) 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 91 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.16%) Maximo
6 9 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.080%) Cloudability
8 5 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.080%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.064%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.064%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.064%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.064%) Shopify
10 3 (0.048%) Elite 3E
10 3 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
10 3 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 3 (0.048%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,153 (34.44%) AWS
2 1,275 (20.40%) Azure DevOps
3 1,156 (18.49%) GCP
4 805 (12.88%) Power Platform
5 774 (12.38%) Entra ID
6 659 (10.54%) Microsoft 365
7 583 (9.33%) GitHub
8 467 (7.47%) Azure Data Factory
9 332 (5.31%) GitHub Actions
10 321 (5.14%) Serverless
11 304 (4.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 253 (4.05%) SaaS
13 239 (3.82%) Azure AKS
14 227 (3.63%) Dynamics 365
15 214 (3.42%) PaaS
15 214 (3.42%) Power Automate
16 207 (3.31%) Azure Monitor
17 178 (2.85%) Azure Functions
18 176 (2.82%) Azure Logic Apps
19 173 (2.77%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 392 (6.27%) Firewall
2 273 (4.37%) DNS
3 234 (3.74%) VPN
4 208 (3.33%) Network Security
5 163 (2.61%) WAN
6 148 (2.37%) DHCP
7 115 (1.84%) LAN
8 85 (1.36%) TCP/IP
9 82 (1.31%) SD-WAN
10 77 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
11 71 (1.14%) VLAN
12 66 (1.06%) Kerberos
13 64 (1.02%) BGP
14 55 (0.88%) OSPF
15 44 (0.70%) SAN
16 41 (0.66%) Wireless
17 38 (0.61%) SSL
18 34 (0.54%) HTTP
19 29 (0.46%) VXLAN
20 28 (0.45%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 562 (8.99%) Power BI
2 372 (5.95%) SQL Server
3 330 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
4 311 (4.98%) Data Lake
5 211 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
6 202 (3.23%) Azure SQL Database
7 169 (2.70%) NoSQL
8 147 (2.35%) Metadata
9 140 (2.24%) Delta Lake
10 98 (1.57%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.42%) Big Data
11 89 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 78 (1.25%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.17%) Tableau
14 67 (1.07%) Oracle Database
15 60 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.88%) BigQuery
17 47 (0.75%) Star Schema
18 46 (0.74%) Spark SQL
19 43 (0.69%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 467 (7.47%) Git
2 430 (6.88%) JIRA
3 305 (4.88%) Jenkins
4 235 (3.76%) GitLab
5 97 (1.55%) Selenium
6 63 (1.01%) Postman
7 52 (0.83%) Cucumber
7 52 (0.83%) JUnit
8 50 (0.80%) MLflow
9 46 (0.74%) JMeter
10 40 (0.64%) REST Assured
11 36 (0.58%) SonarQube
12 34 (0.54%) Artifactory
13 31 (0.50%) Cypress.io
14 25 (0.40%) TestRail
15 24 (0.38%) Gatling
15 24 (0.38%) Visual Studio
15 24 (0.38%) WebDriver
16 23 (0.37%) Bitbucket
16 23 (0.37%) Maven
General
1 1,630 (26.08%) Social Skills
2 1,177 (18.83%) Finance
3 638 (10.21%) Public Sector
4 595 (9.52%) Analytical Skills
5 359 (5.74%) Banking
6 189 (3.02%) Documentation Skills
7 144 (2.30%) Legal
8 97 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 88 (1.41%) Retail
10 86 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
12 68 (1.09%) Financial Institution
13 65 (1.04%) Marketing
14 64 (1.02%) Law
15 63 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
15 63 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 62 (0.99%) Front Office
17 54 (0.86%) Telecoms
18 40 (0.64%) Local Government
19 38 (0.61%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,038 (16.61%) Architect
2 767 (12.27%) Developer
3 760 (12.16%) Senior
4 577 (9.23%) Azure Engineer
5 535 (8.56%) Data Engineer
6 463 (7.41%) Lead
7 399 (6.38%) Analyst
8 323 (5.17%) DevOps Engineer
9 275 (4.40%) Solutions Architect
10 248 (3.97%) Consultant
11 210 (3.36%) Cloud Engineer
12 195 (3.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 165 (2.64%) Azure Architect
14 161 (2.58%) Security Engineer
15 152 (2.43%) Platform Engineer
16 138 (2.21%) Technical Architect
17 137 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 137 (2.19%) Data Architect
18 132 (2.11%) Business Analyst
19 129 (2.06%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 465 (7.44%) .NET
2 399 (6.38%) REST
3 254 (4.06%) Kafka
4 250 (4.00%) React
5 227 (3.63%) PySpark
6 198 (3.17%) Node.js
7 178 (2.85%) RESTful
8 176 (2.82%) Spring
9 170 (2.72%) OAuth
10 163 (2.61%) LDAP
11 158 (2.53%) AngularJS
12 139 (2.22%) Spring Boot
13 125 (2.00%) Middleware
14 122 (1.95%) JSON
15 118 (1.89%) SAML
16 117 (1.87%) SOAP
17 115 (1.84%) HTML
18 109 (1.74%) OpenID
19 100 (1.60%) YAML
20 96 (1.54%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 614 (9.82%) Cloud Native
2 247 (3.95%) Onboarding
3 216 (3.46%) Product Ownership
4 180 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
5 163 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
6 157 (2.51%) Data Centre
7 145 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
7 145 (2.32%) Security Posture
8 144 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
9 133 (2.13%) Public Cloud
10 117 (1.87%) AI Agents
11 85 (1.36%) Data Structures
11 85 (1.36%) Replication
12 69 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
13 68 (1.09%) Management Information System
14 56 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
15 55 (0.88%) Low-Code
15 55 (0.88%) PKI
16 51 (0.82%) Virtual Team
17 48 (0.77%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 702 (11.23%) Windows
2 318 (5.09%) Linux
3 207 (3.31%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.78%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.06%) Unix
6 60 (0.96%) VMS
7 56 (0.90%) Mac OS
8 48 (0.77%) Apple iOS
8 48 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 34 (0.54%) Android
10 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
11 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 11 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 9 (0.14%) AIX
16 8 (0.13%) CentOS
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.096%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.096%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,332 (37.31%) DevOps
2 1,923 (30.76%) CI/CD
3 1,441 (23.05%) Agile
4 950 (15.20%) Analytics
5 935 (14.96%) Problem-Solving
6 885 (14.16%) Infrastructure as Code
7 882 (14.11%) AI
8 843 (13.49%) Migration
9 713 (11.41%) Data Modelling
10 625 (10.00%) Stakeholder Management
11 624 (9.98%) Business Intelligence
12 621 (9.93%) Data Pipeline
13 600 (9.60%) Continuous Improvement
14 594 (9.50%) ETL
15 585 (9.36%) Containerisation
16 544 (8.70%) Microservices
17 536 (8.57%) Data Engineering
18 528 (8.45%) Roadmaps
19 511 (8.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 468 (7.49%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,545 (24.72%) Python
2 1,370 (21.92%) SQL
3 671 (10.73%) PowerShell
4 526 (8.41%) Java
5 521 (8.33%) C#
6 369 (5.90%) JavaScript
7 225 (3.60%) Bash
8 220 (3.52%) TypeScript
9 197 (3.15%) Bicep
10 92 (1.47%) Scala
11 83 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 78 (1.25%) Go
13 74 (1.18%) T-SQL
14 53 (0.85%) Kusto Query Language
14 53 (0.85%) PL/SQL
15 44 (0.70%) R
16 36 (0.58%) Shell Script
17 24 (0.38%) C++
18 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
19 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,591 (25.45%) Security Cleared
2 1,329 (21.26%) SC Cleared
3 443 (7.09%) Degree
4 355 (5.68%) Azure Certification
5 174 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
6 173 (2.77%) CISSP
7 143 (2.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 142 (2.27%) Cisco Certification
9 136 (2.18%) DV Cleared
10 125 (2.00%) AWS Certification
11 100 (1.60%) BPSS Clearance
12 97 (1.55%) CISM
13 69 (1.10%) CCNP
14 61 (0.98%) PMP
15 58 (0.93%) PMI Certification
16 57 (0.91%) TOGAF Certification
17 54 (0.86%) Master's Degree
18 51 (0.82%) ISTQB
19 50 (0.80%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 35 (0.56%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 446 (7.13%) Data Quality
2 335 (5.36%) GDPR
3 333 (5.33%) QA
4 254 (4.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 233 (3.73%) NIST
6 92 (1.47%) Accessibility
7 80 (1.28%) NCSC
7 80 (1.28%) PCI DSS
8 63 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
9 60 (0.96%) SLA
10 59 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 51 (0.82%) PMO
12 44 (0.70%) GRC
13 34 (0.54%) HIPAA
14 29 (0.46%) WCAG
15 21 (0.34%) NIST 800
16 20 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 20 (0.32%) ISO 20022
17 17 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 17 (0.27%) PSD2
System Software
1 813 (13.01%) Active Directory
2 693 (11.09%) Docker
3 179 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
5 106 (1.70%) Virtual Desktop
6 91 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 53 (0.85%) vSphere
8 33 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
9 25 (0.40%) 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%) BitLocker
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
Systems Management
1 994 (15.90%) Terraform
2 912 (14.59%) Kubernetes
3 342 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
4 281 (4.50%) Ansible
5 171 (2.74%) Grafana
6 146 (2.34%) Prometheus
7 135 (2.16%) Single Sign-On
8 106 (1.70%) 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 15 (0.24%) HAProxy
17 15 (0.24%) HP ALM
17 15 (0.24%) Kubeflow
17 15 (0.24%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,045 (32.71%) Microsoft
2 622 (9.95%) Databricks
3 277 (4.43%) ServiceNow
4 273 (4.37%) Oracle
5 261 (4.18%) Google
6 252 (4.03%) VMware
7 183 (2.93%) SAP
8 161 (2.58%) Cisco
8 161 (2.58%) OpenAI
9 141 (2.26%) Splunk
10 135 (2.16%) CyberArk
11 101 (1.62%) Foundry
12 100 (1.60%) Palo Alto
13 96 (1.54%) Salesforce
14 78 (1.25%) Okta
15 70 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
16 68 (1.09%) Citrix
17 65 (1.04%) Dynatrace
18 64 (1.02%) Informatica
19 58 (0.93%) Zscaler