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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,172 3,735 4,969
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.31% 15.35% 13.35%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.12% 41.19% 41.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,457 2,661 3,648
10th Percentile £363 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £641
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 25 48
10th Percentile £25.47 £21.42 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.63 £26.45 £22.45
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -36.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £91.48 £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 14,314 9,067 11,866
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.50% 37.27% 31.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,862 6,351 8,548
10th Percentile £318 £313 £290
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £740 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 446 194 323
10th Percentile £15.97 £15.11 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £15.87
Median hourly rate £45.25 £25.98 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +74.21% +25.06% -35.70%
75th Percentile £67.75 £41.85 £32.50
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.38 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £40.78 £27.43 £21.00
% change year-on-year +48.70% +30.60% -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 30 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 30 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 30 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 3,310 £533 -3.18% 838
North of England +2 845 £500 +5.26% 514
South East +1 790 £500 -4.76% 603
Midlands 0 506 £488 -4.41% 260
North West +3 453 £500 - 273
South West +5 385 £514 -2.06% 240
West Midlands 0 368 £500 -4.76% 148
Yorkshire +2 341 £500 +17.65% 153
East of England +4 152 £550 -5.17% 194
East Midlands +1 128 £450 -5.26% 111
North East 0 60 £525 +3.70% 89
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
1 289 (4.68%) SharePoint
2 181 (2.93%) Microsoft Exchange
3 176 (2.85%) Apache Spark
4 166 (2.69%) Confluence
5 95 (1.54%) Apache
6 87 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) IIS
8 18 (0.29%) SAS
9 14 (0.23%) Appian
9 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
9 14 (0.23%) Camunda
9 14 (0.23%) CMS
10 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.21%) Mendix
11 11 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.081%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.081%) nginx
14 5 (0.081%) Umbraco
Applications
1 97 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.081%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.065%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.065%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.049%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.049%) Weka
11 2 (0.032%) Revit
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 96 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 62 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.18%) Maximo
3 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.16%) Remedy ITSM
5 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.081%) Cloudability
6 5 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
7 4 (0.065%) Oracle FAH
7 4 (0.065%) SAP BPC
7 4 (0.065%) Unit4 Business World
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,127 (34.46%) AWS
2 1,266 (20.51%) Azure DevOps
3 1,162 (18.83%) GCP
4 800 (12.96%) Power Platform
5 766 (12.41%) Entra ID
6 650 (10.53%) Microsoft 365
7 574 (9.30%) GitHub
8 464 (7.52%) Azure Data Factory
9 328 (5.31%) GitHub Actions
10 324 (5.25%) Serverless
11 303 (4.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 244 (3.95%) SaaS
13 240 (3.89%) Azure AKS
14 231 (3.74%) Dynamics 365
15 213 (3.45%) Azure Monitor
16 212 (3.43%) Power Automate
17 206 (3.34%) PaaS
18 183 (2.97%) Azure Functions
19 180 (2.92%) Azure Logic Apps
20 174 (2.82%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 397 (6.43%) Firewall
2 270 (4.37%) DNS
3 240 (3.89%) VPN
4 205 (3.32%) Network Security
5 162 (2.62%) WAN
6 146 (2.37%) DHCP
7 117 (1.90%) LAN
8 85 (1.38%) TCP/IP
9 79 (1.28%) SD-WAN
9 79 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
10 69 (1.12%) VLAN
11 65 (1.05%) Kerberos
12 59 (0.96%) BGP
13 52 (0.84%) OSPF
14 43 (0.70%) SAN
15 38 (0.62%) Wireless
16 34 (0.55%) HTTP
16 34 (0.55%) SSL
17 31 (0.50%) Internet
18 29 (0.47%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 560 (9.07%) Power BI
2 373 (6.04%) SQL Server
3 331 (5.36%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.94%) Data Lake
5 213 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
6 204 (3.31%) Azure SQL Database
7 171 (2.77%) NoSQL
8 146 (2.37%) Metadata
9 138 (2.24%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.57%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.47%) Big Data
11 91 (1.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 78 (1.26%) MongoDB
13 75 (1.22%) Tableau
14 65 (1.05%) Oracle Database
15 60 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.89%) BigQuery
17 48 (0.78%) Star Schema
18 46 (0.75%) MySQL
18 46 (0.75%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 451 (7.31%) Git
2 423 (6.85%) JIRA
3 297 (4.81%) Jenkins
4 232 (3.76%) GitLab
5 101 (1.64%) Selenium
6 63 (1.02%) Postman
7 56 (0.91%) JUnit
8 55 (0.89%) Cucumber
9 52 (0.84%) MLflow
10 47 (0.76%) JMeter
11 42 (0.68%) REST Assured
12 34 (0.55%) Artifactory
12 34 (0.55%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.52%) Cypress.io
14 25 (0.41%) TestRail
14 25 (0.41%) WebDriver
15 24 (0.39%) Bitbucket
15 24 (0.39%) Gatling
15 24 (0.39%) Visual Studio
16 21 (0.34%) Maven
General
1 1,643 (26.62%) Social Skills
2 1,152 (18.66%) Finance
3 647 (10.48%) Public Sector
4 590 (9.56%) Analytical Skills
5 350 (5.67%) Banking
6 192 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
7 141 (2.28%) Legal
8 94 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 88 (1.43%) Retail
10 83 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
12 66 (1.07%) Financial Institution
13 64 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
13 64 (1.04%) Marketing
14 62 (1.00%) Investment Banking
15 61 (0.99%) Front Office
16 59 (0.96%) Law
17 54 (0.87%) Telecoms
18 44 (0.71%) Local Government
19 36 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,009 (16.35%) Architect
2 785 (12.72%) Developer
3 746 (12.09%) Senior
4 567 (9.19%) Azure Engineer
5 535 (8.67%) Data Engineer
6 463 (7.50%) Lead
7 385 (6.24%) Analyst
8 316 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
9 263 (4.26%) Solutions Architect
10 242 (3.92%) Consultant
11 200 (3.24%) Cloud Engineer
12 195 (3.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 165 (2.67%) Azure Architect
14 159 (2.58%) Security Engineer
15 151 (2.45%) Platform Engineer
16 134 (2.17%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 134 (2.17%) Data Architect
16 134 (2.17%) Technical Architect
17 129 (2.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 129 (2.09%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 463 (7.50%) .NET
2 397 (6.43%) REST
3 257 (4.16%) React
4 246 (3.99%) Kafka
5 225 (3.65%) PySpark
6 202 (3.27%) Node.js
7 180 (2.92%) RESTful
8 178 (2.88%) Spring
9 173 (2.80%) OAuth
10 156 (2.53%) LDAP
11 155 (2.51%) AngularJS
12 141 (2.28%) Spring Boot
13 121 (1.96%) JSON
14 120 (1.94%) SAML
14 120 (1.94%) SOAP
15 119 (1.93%) HTML
16 118 (1.91%) Middleware
17 110 (1.78%) OpenID
18 99 (1.60%) PyTorch
19 98 (1.59%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 598 (9.69%) Cloud Native
2 244 (3.95%) Onboarding
3 216 (3.50%) Product Ownership
4 178 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
5 162 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
6 151 (2.45%) Security Posture
7 150 (2.43%) Enterprise Software
8 148 (2.40%) Data Centre
9 144 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
10 136 (2.20%) Public Cloud
11 112 (1.81%) AI Agents
12 83 (1.34%) Replication
13 82 (1.33%) Data Structures
14 71 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
15 70 (1.13%) Management Information System
16 56 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
16 56 (0.91%) PKI
17 54 (0.87%) Low-Code
18 50 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
19 45 (0.73%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 688 (11.15%) Windows
2 307 (4.97%) Linux
3 214 (3.47%) Windows Server
4 113 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 61 (0.99%) Unix
6 60 (0.97%) VMS
7 54 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 47 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 42 (0.68%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.52%) Android
11 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.31%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.13%) AIX
17 7 (0.11%) CentOS
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.097%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.097%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,310 (37.43%) DevOps
2 1,886 (30.56%) CI/CD
3 1,442 (23.36%) Agile
4 938 (15.20%) Analytics
5 936 (15.17%) Problem-Solving
6 873 (14.14%) Infrastructure as Code
7 870 (14.10%) AI
8 840 (13.61%) Migration
9 713 (11.55%) Data Modelling
10 621 (10.06%) Business Intelligence
11 615 (9.96%) Data Pipeline
11 615 (9.96%) Stakeholder Management
12 596 (9.66%) Continuous Improvement
13 588 (9.53%) Containerisation
14 580 (9.40%) ETL
15 541 (8.77%) Microservices
16 539 (8.73%) Data Engineering
17 509 (8.25%) Roadmaps
18 501 (8.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 468 (7.58%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,541 (24.97%) Python
2 1,370 (22.20%) SQL
3 663 (10.74%) PowerShell
4 532 (8.62%) Java
5 524 (8.49%) C#
6 386 (6.25%) JavaScript
7 227 (3.68%) TypeScript
8 217 (3.52%) Bash
9 197 (3.19%) Bicep
10 94 (1.52%) Scala
11 80 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.30%) Go
12 72 (1.17%) T-SQL
13 60 (0.97%) Kusto Query Language
14 59 (0.96%) PL/SQL
15 40 (0.65%) R
16 36 (0.58%) Shell Script
17 20 (0.32%) C++
17 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
18 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,562 (25.31%) Security Cleared
2 1,305 (21.14%) SC Cleared
3 446 (7.23%) Degree
4 351 (5.69%) Azure Certification
5 184 (2.98%) Computer Science Degree
6 162 (2.62%) CISSP
7 140 (2.27%) Microsoft Certification
8 130 (2.11%) Cisco Certification
9 124 (2.01%) DV Cleared
10 120 (1.94%) AWS Certification
11 103 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
12 94 (1.52%) CISM
13 68 (1.10%) CCNP
14 62 (1.00%) PMP
15 59 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 56 (0.91%) Master's Degree
17 55 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
18 50 (0.81%) ISTQB
19 40 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 35 (0.57%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 447 (7.24%) Data Quality
2 342 (5.54%) GDPR
3 333 (5.40%) QA
4 249 (4.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 222 (3.60%) NIST
6 92 (1.49%) Accessibility
7 80 (1.30%) PCI DSS
8 79 (1.28%) NCSC
9 60 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 57 (0.92%) SLA
11 53 (0.86%) Cyber Essentials
12 48 (0.78%) PMO
13 42 (0.68%) GRC
14 34 (0.55%) HIPAA
15 29 (0.47%) WCAG
16 22 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.34%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 18 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
20 15 (0.24%) PSD2
System Software
1 803 (13.01%) Active Directory
2 694 (11.24%) Docker
3 173 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
5 99 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
6 90 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 55 (0.89%) vSphere
8 34 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
9 25 (0.41%) Firmware
10 19 (0.31%) VMware NSX
11 18 (0.29%) NFS
12 11 (0.18%) Postfix
13 8 (0.13%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.097%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.097%) RACF
14 6 (0.097%) Varnish
15 5 (0.081%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 5 (0.081%) HDFS
15 5 (0.081%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.081%) Snort
Systems Management
1 977 (15.83%) Terraform
2 922 (14.94%) Kubernetes
3 337 (5.46%) Microsoft Intune
4 272 (4.41%) Ansible
5 172 (2.79%) Grafana
6 144 (2.33%) Prometheus
7 138 (2.24%) Single Sign-On
8 106 (1.72%) SCCM
9 65 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.57%) Istio
11 33 (0.53%) Argo
11 33 (0.53%) Puppet
12 27 (0.44%) Progress Chef
13 25 (0.41%) FortiGate
14 21 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
14 21 (0.34%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.28%) HP ALM
15 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
16 15 (0.24%) linkerd
17 14 (0.23%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,036 (32.99%) Microsoft
2 618 (10.01%) Databricks
3 280 (4.54%) Oracle
4 274 (4.44%) Google
5 270 (4.37%) ServiceNow
6 249 (4.03%) VMware
7 177 (2.87%) SAP
8 158 (2.56%) OpenAI
9 155 (2.51%) Cisco
10 143 (2.32%) Splunk
11 126 (2.04%) CyberArk
12 104 (1.69%) Foundry
13 94 (1.52%) Palo Alto
14 89 (1.44%) Salesforce
15 81 (1.31%) Okta
16 68 (1.10%) Citrix
17 64 (1.04%) BeyondTrust
18 63 (1.02%) Dynatrace
19 60 (0.97%) Informatica
20 59 (0.96%) IBM