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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,645 3,798 5,121
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.34% 15.21% 13.66%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.75% 40.35% 42.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,706 2,650 3,762
10th Percentile £366 £350 £360
25th Percentile £428 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year - -3.23% -3.13%
75th Percentile £630 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £537
% change year-on-year - -2.17% -2.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 154 30 50
10th Percentile £25.38 £24.14 £17.80
25th Percentile £47.91 £27.80 £22.91
Median hourly rate £57.50 £43.23 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +33.02% +17.62% -41.67%
75th Percentile £78.94 £76.96 £61.19
90th Percentile £102.00 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £36.75
% change year-on-year +27.78% +22.45% -40.58%

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 15,187 9,412 12,052
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.05% 37.68% 32.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,287 6,395 8,605
10th Percentile £325 £310 £306
25th Percentile £413 £413 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £513 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 540 235 338
10th Percentile £16.62 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.12 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £42.59 £25.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.03% +15.91% -31.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £39.38 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.03 £69.75 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £28.60 £22.00
% change year-on-year +31.12% +30.00% -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 23 June 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 23 June 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 23 June 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 3,517 £540 -1.82% 887
North of England +7 950 £500 +5.26% 481
South East +3 834 £511 +2.25% 610
Midlands +3 560 £500 - 276
North West +8 492 £500 - 276
South West +7 431 £525 +0.96% 229
West Midlands +1 419 £500 -4.76% 160
Yorkshire +5 378 £500 +5.26% 132
East of England +7 170 £550 -4.76% 180
East Midlands +4 131 £500 +9.59% 115
North East +5 92 £525 +5.00% 78
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
1 325 (4.89%) SharePoint
2 195 (2.93%) Confluence
3 169 (2.54%) Apache Spark
4 166 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
5 110 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
6 101 (1.52%) Apache
7 36 (0.54%) SAS
8 25 (0.38%) IIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
13 9 (0.14%) Appian
13 9 (0.14%) Mendix
14 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 5 (0.075%) Jupyter
Applications
1 95 (1.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 26 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.20%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.12%) Revit
10 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.075%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.075%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.060%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.060%) Notion
12 4 (0.060%) Trello
13 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.015%) InDesign
14 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.015%) Sketch
14 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 95 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.17%) Maximo
6 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.12%) Shopify
8 7 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 6 (0.090%) Endur
9 6 (0.090%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.090%) SimCorp Dimension
9 6 (0.090%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.075%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.075%) SAP MM
11 4 (0.060%) Magento
11 4 (0.060%) NEC Housing
11 4 (0.060%) Oracle FAH
11 4 (0.060%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,328 (35.03%) AWS
2 1,347 (20.27%) Azure DevOps
3 1,120 (16.85%) GCP
4 860 (12.94%) Power Platform
5 846 (12.73%) Entra ID
6 671 (10.10%) Microsoft 365
7 582 (8.76%) GitHub
8 431 (6.49%) Azure Data Factory
9 347 (5.22%) GitHub Actions
10 324 (4.88%) Serverless
11 282 (4.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 271 (4.08%) SaaS
13 243 (3.66%) Azure AKS
14 221 (3.33%) Power Automate
15 215 (3.24%) Dynamics 365
16 210 (3.16%) Azure Monitor
17 207 (3.12%) PaaS
18 195 (2.93%) Snowflake
19 188 (2.83%) PowerApps
20 182 (2.74%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 405 (6.09%) Firewall
2 302 (4.54%) DNS
3 239 (3.60%) VPN
4 223 (3.36%) Network Security
5 191 (2.87%) WAN
6 162 (2.44%) DHCP
7 116 (1.75%) LAN
8 103 (1.55%) TCP/IP
9 98 (1.47%) SD-WAN
10 89 (1.34%) BGP
11 73 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
12 70 (1.05%) OSPF
12 70 (1.05%) VLAN
13 59 (0.89%) Kerberos
14 49 (0.74%) SAN
15 45 (0.68%) SSL
16 42 (0.63%) VXLAN
16 42 (0.63%) Wireless
17 36 (0.54%) Internet
18 34 (0.51%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 599 (9.01%) Power BI
2 392 (5.90%) SQL Server
3 338 (5.09%) Data Warehouse
4 316 (4.76%) Data Lake
5 228 (3.43%) PostgreSQL
6 185 (2.78%) Azure SQL Database
7 172 (2.59%) NoSQL
8 159 (2.39%) Metadata
9 133 (2.00%) Delta Lake
10 114 (1.72%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.32%) Big Data
12 83 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.13%) Tableau
14 72 (1.08%) MongoDB
15 64 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
16 56 (0.84%) Oracle Database
17 54 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
19 45 (0.68%) Spark SQL
19 45 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 472 (7.10%) JIRA
2 471 (7.09%) Git
3 298 (4.48%) Jenkins
4 247 (3.72%) GitLab
5 97 (1.46%) Selenium
6 57 (0.86%) JMeter
7 56 (0.84%) Postman
8 52 (0.78%) JUnit
9 50 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 41 (0.62%) REST Assured
10 41 (0.62%) SonarQube
11 40 (0.60%) MLflow
12 35 (0.53%) Visual Studio
13 33 (0.50%) WebDriver
14 29 (0.44%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.44%) Maven
15 27 (0.41%) Gatling
16 25 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
17 24 (0.36%) Gradle
18 22 (0.33%) LoadRunner
General
1 1,679 (25.27%) Social Skills
2 1,328 (19.98%) Finance
3 676 (10.17%) Public Sector
4 619 (9.32%) Analytical Skills
5 391 (5.88%) Banking
6 189 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 153 (2.30%) Legal
8 147 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 140 (2.11%) Retail
10 86 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
11 66 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
11 66 (0.99%) Investment Banking
12 64 (0.96%) Financial Institution
12 64 (0.96%) Front Office
12 64 (0.96%) Law
13 58 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
14 52 (0.78%) Marketing
15 51 (0.77%) Manufacturing
15 51 (0.77%) Telecoms
16 42 (0.63%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,176 (17.70%) Architect
2 829 (12.48%) Senior
3 791 (11.90%) Developer
4 584 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 525 (7.90%) Data Engineer
6 505 (7.60%) Lead
7 404 (6.08%) Analyst
8 339 (5.10%) Solutions Architect
9 326 (4.91%) DevOps Engineer
10 280 (4.21%) Consultant
11 258 (3.88%) Cloud Engineer
12 235 (3.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 184 (2.77%) Data Architect
14 180 (2.71%) Azure Architect
15 173 (2.60%) Platform Engineer
16 172 (2.59%) Security Engineer
17 153 (2.30%) Technical Architect
18 151 (2.27%) Business Analyst
19 145 (2.18%) Project Manager
20 144 (2.17%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 506 (7.61%) .NET
2 441 (6.64%) REST
3 271 (4.08%) React
4 247 (3.72%) Kafka
5 227 (3.42%) PySpark
6 209 (3.15%) RESTful
7 199 (2.99%) OAuth
8 170 (2.56%) Node.js
9 169 (2.54%) Spring
10 153 (2.30%) AngularJS
11 146 (2.20%) LDAP
12 139 (2.09%) Spring Boot
13 136 (2.05%) JSON
14 135 (2.03%) SAML
15 123 (1.85%) OpenID
16 117 (1.76%) Middleware
17 115 (1.73%) HTML
18 113 (1.70%) SOAP
19 109 (1.64%) .NET Framework
20 97 (1.46%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 712 (10.71%) Cloud Native
2 287 (4.32%) Onboarding
3 254 (3.82%) Product Ownership
4 212 (3.19%) Data Centre
5 201 (3.02%) Hybrid Cloud
6 198 (2.98%) Distributed Systems
7 181 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
8 153 (2.30%) Security Posture
9 145 (2.18%) Enterprise Software
10 144 (2.17%) AI Agents
11 137 (2.06%) Public Cloud
12 102 (1.53%) Data Structures
13 85 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
13 85 (1.28%) Management Information System
14 84 (1.26%) Replication
15 70 (1.05%) Enterprise Cloud
15 70 (1.05%) PKI
16 67 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
17 61 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
18 55 (0.83%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 781 (11.75%) Windows
2 330 (4.97%) Linux
3 239 (3.60%) Windows Server
4 102 (1.53%) Windows 10
5 70 (1.05%) Unix
6 64 (0.96%) Apple iOS
7 59 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 58 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 56 (0.84%) Android
10 50 (0.75%) VMS
11 31 (0.47%) Ubuntu
12 23 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
14 13 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
16 11 (0.17%) CentOS
17 10 (0.15%) Debian
18 6 (0.090%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.090%) Rocky
18 6 (0.090%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,423 (36.46%) DevOps
2 2,043 (30.74%) CI/CD
3 1,576 (23.72%) Agile
4 1,037 (15.61%) AI
5 983 (14.79%) Infrastructure as Code
6 982 (14.78%) Analytics
7 957 (14.40%) Migration
8 922 (13.88%) Problem-Solving
9 772 (11.62%) Stakeholder Management
10 751 (11.30%) Data Modelling
11 660 (9.93%) Continuous Improvement
12 656 (9.87%) Data Pipeline
13 645 (9.71%) Business Intelligence
14 641 (9.65%) Roadmaps
15 614 (9.24%) ETL
16 597 (8.98%) Containerisation
17 567 (8.53%) Microservices
18 566 (8.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 561 (8.44%) Data Engineering
20 498 (7.49%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,582 (23.81%) Python
2 1,383 (20.81%) SQL
3 674 (10.14%) PowerShell
4 548 (8.25%) Java
5 529 (7.96%) C#
6 368 (5.54%) JavaScript
7 246 (3.70%) TypeScript
8 223 (3.36%) Bash
9 220 (3.31%) Bicep
10 89 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 77 (1.16%) T-SQL
12 71 (1.07%) Go
13 70 (1.05%) Scala
14 41 (0.62%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.54%) R
16 32 (0.48%) Shell Script
17 29 (0.44%) PL/SQL
18 27 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 22 (0.33%) C++
20 16 (0.24%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,643 (24.73%) Security Cleared
2 1,365 (20.54%) SC Cleared
3 479 (7.21%) Degree
4 364 (5.48%) Azure Certification
5 215 (3.24%) CISSP
6 176 (2.65%) DV Cleared
7 174 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
8 167 (2.51%) Microsoft Certification
9 161 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
10 156 (2.35%) AWS Certification
11 124 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
12 108 (1.63%) CISM
13 73 (1.10%) CCNP
14 72 (1.08%) PMP
15 66 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 62 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 49 (0.74%) ISTQB
17 49 (0.74%) Master's Degree
18 46 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 479 (7.21%) Data Quality
2 339 (5.10%) QA
3 305 (4.59%) GDPR
4 253 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 238 (3.58%) NIST
6 127 (1.91%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.44%) NCSC
8 85 (1.28%) SLA
9 74 (1.11%) PCI DSS
10 69 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
11 67 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 53 (0.80%) GRC
12 53 (0.80%) WCAG
13 37 (0.56%) PMO
14 35 (0.53%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.45%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.39%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.24%) COBIT
18 16 (0.24%) PSD2
System Software
1 834 (12.55%) Active Directory
2 677 (10.19%) Docker
3 188 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 126 (1.90%) Virtual Desktop
5 114 (1.72%) Virtual Machines
6 90 (1.35%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.89%) vSphere
8 51 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.42%) Firmware
9 28 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.30%) NFS
11 17 (0.26%) Postfix
12 10 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.12%) Varnish
14 7 (0.11%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.090%) KVM
16 5 (0.075%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.075%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.075%) IAG
16 5 (0.075%) RACF
Systems Management
1 1,062 (15.98%) Terraform
2 924 (13.91%) Kubernetes
3 365 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 303 (4.56%) Ansible
5 172 (2.59%) Grafana
6 149 (2.24%) Prometheus
7 144 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
8 91 (1.37%) SCCM
9 68 (1.02%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.57%) Progress Chef
11 36 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.53%) Puppet
13 34 (0.51%) FortiGate
14 31 (0.47%) Argo
15 28 (0.42%) Istio
16 22 (0.33%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.24%) Packer
19 15 (0.23%) HP ALM
20 12 (0.18%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 2,147 (32.31%) Microsoft
2 633 (9.53%) Databricks
3 311 (4.68%) ServiceNow
4 258 (3.88%) VMware
5 251 (3.78%) Oracle
6 242 (3.64%) Google
7 192 (2.89%) SAP
8 181 (2.72%) Cisco
9 174 (2.62%) OpenAI
10 129 (1.94%) Splunk
11 124 (1.87%) CyberArk
11 124 (1.87%) Palo Alto
12 121 (1.82%) Salesforce
13 112 (1.69%) Foundry
14 88 (1.32%) Okta
15 81 (1.22%) Dynatrace
16 72 (1.08%) Zscaler
17 69 (1.04%) Informatica
18 57 (0.86%) Citrix
19 56 (0.84%) Red Hat