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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,453 3,718 4,978
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.36% 15.47% 13.53%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.67% 41.20% 42.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,604 2,607 3,679
10th Percentile £363 £352 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -1.79%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 140 24 45
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.99 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.77% +2.83% -44.44%
75th Percentile £68.92 £75.69 £61.60
90th Percentile £97.83 £93.61 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%

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 14,776 9,024 11,781
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.18% 37.56% 32.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,069 6,187 8,492
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £745
UK median daily rate £508 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +0.59% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 506 210 325
10th Percentile £15.69 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.57 £18.13 £15.98
Median hourly rate £39.75 £25.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +55.88% +19.33% -38.94%
75th Percentile £67.84 £37.50 £38.75
90th Percentile £81.13 £67.63 £69.20
UK median hourly rate £36.86 £28.00 £21.37
% change year-on-year +31.63% +31.02% -42.24%

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 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 30 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 30 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 3,441 £540 -1.82% 622
North of England +5 934 £500 +5.26% 405
South East +2 823 £503 +0.60% 495
Midlands -1 512 £493 +0.10% 219
North West +3 470 £500 +5.26% 243
South West +5 398 £530 +0.95% 179
Yorkshire +6 388 £500 +11.11% 97
West Midlands 0 373 £500 -4.76% 136
East of England +6 156 £550 -5.17% 133
East Midlands +6 129 £463 - 83
North East +2 86 £525 +2.44% 66
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
1 318 (4.93%) SharePoint
2 176 (2.73%) Apache Spark
3 175 (2.71%) Confluence
4 173 (2.68%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (1.53%) Apache
6 97 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.37%) IIS
8 20 (0.31%) SAS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.20%) Appian
11 13 (0.20%) Mendix
12 12 (0.19%) Camunda
12 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
14 10 (0.15%) ArcGIS
15 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 6 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 87 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) AutoCAD
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.077%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.077%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.062%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.062%) Notion
9 4 (0.062%) Revit
9 4 (0.062%) Trello
10 3 (0.046%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.015%) InDesign
11 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.015%) Sketch
11 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 90 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 7 (0.11%) NEC Housing
8 6 (0.093%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.093%) Shopify
8 6 (0.093%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.077%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.077%) SAP MM
9 5 (0.077%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.062%) Endur
10 4 (0.062%) Magento
10 4 (0.062%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.062%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.062%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,225 (34.48%) AWS
2 1,308 (20.27%) Azure DevOps
3 1,125 (17.43%) GCP
4 819 (12.69%) Power Platform
5 815 (12.63%) Entra ID
6 687 (10.65%) Microsoft 365
7 587 (9.10%) GitHub
8 454 (7.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 341 (5.28%) GitHub Actions
10 315 (4.88%) Serverless
11 290 (4.49%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 257 (3.98%) SaaS
13 233 (3.61%) Azure AKS
14 217 (3.36%) Dynamics 365
15 216 (3.35%) Power Automate
16 210 (3.25%) PaaS
17 205 (3.18%) Azure Monitor
18 181 (2.80%) Snowflake
19 177 (2.74%) IaaS
20 176 (2.73%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 395 (6.12%) Firewall
2 291 (4.51%) DNS
3 235 (3.64%) VPN
4 216 (3.35%) Network Security
5 179 (2.77%) WAN
6 159 (2.46%) DHCP
7 119 (1.84%) LAN
8 92 (1.43%) SD-WAN
8 92 (1.43%) TCP/IP
9 77 (1.19%) BGP
10 71 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
11 70 (1.08%) VLAN
12 66 (1.02%) OSPF
13 62 (0.96%) Kerberos
14 50 (0.77%) SAN
15 42 (0.65%) VXLAN
16 41 (0.64%) SSL
16 41 (0.64%) Wireless
17 31 (0.48%) IPsec
18 30 (0.46%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 562 (8.71%) Power BI
2 387 (6.00%) SQL Server
3 328 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
4 318 (4.93%) Data Lake
5 216 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 193 (2.99%) Azure SQL Database
7 172 (2.67%) NoSQL
8 142 (2.20%) Metadata
9 139 (2.15%) Delta Lake
10 98 (1.52%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.43%) Big Data
12 88 (1.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.16%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.15%) Tableau
15 65 (1.01%) Snowflake Schema
16 58 (0.90%) BigQuery
17 56 (0.87%) Oracle Database
18 47 (0.73%) Spark SQL
19 46 (0.71%) MySQL
20 45 (0.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 453 (7.02%) Git
2 440 (6.82%) JIRA
3 305 (4.73%) Jenkins
4 248 (3.84%) GitLab
5 100 (1.55%) Selenium
6 63 (0.98%) Postman
7 55 (0.85%) Cucumber
8 52 (0.81%) JMeter
9 49 (0.76%) JUnit
10 44 (0.68%) MLflow
11 42 (0.65%) REST Assured
12 39 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 30 (0.46%) Artifactory
13 30 (0.46%) Cypress.io
14 28 (0.43%) WebDriver
15 27 (0.42%) Maven
15 27 (0.42%) Visual Studio
16 25 (0.39%) Gatling
17 24 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
18 23 (0.36%) TestRail
General
1 1,631 (25.28%) Social Skills
2 1,249 (19.36%) Finance
3 643 (9.96%) Public Sector
4 592 (9.17%) Analytical Skills
5 366 (5.67%) Banking
6 185 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 149 (2.31%) Legal
8 115 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 113 (1.75%) Retail
10 89 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
11 70 (1.08%) Investment Banking
12 68 (1.05%) Financial Institution
13 64 (0.99%) Front Office
14 63 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
15 60 (0.93%) Law
16 57 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
17 56 (0.87%) Marketing
18 45 (0.70%) Telecoms
19 40 (0.62%) Local Government
19 40 (0.62%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,116 (17.29%) Architect
2 786 (12.18%) Senior
3 762 (11.81%) Developer
4 573 (8.88%) Azure Engineer
5 531 (8.23%) Data Engineer
6 487 (7.55%) Lead
7 402 (6.23%) Analyst
8 326 (5.05%) DevOps Engineer
9 310 (4.80%) Solutions Architect
10 258 (4.00%) Consultant
11 230 (3.56%) Cloud Engineer
12 227 (3.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 179 (2.77%) Security Engineer
14 172 (2.67%) Azure Architect
15 169 (2.62%) Data Architect
16 151 (2.34%) Platform Engineer
17 141 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 140 (2.17%) Technical Architect
19 139 (2.15%) Project Manager
20 138 (2.14%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 492 (7.62%) .NET
2 426 (6.60%) REST
3 265 (4.11%) React
4 235 (3.64%) Kafka
5 224 (3.47%) PySpark
6 192 (2.98%) RESTful
7 185 (2.87%) OAuth
8 181 (2.80%) Node.js
9 167 (2.59%) LDAP
10 163 (2.53%) Spring
11 157 (2.43%) AngularJS
12 135 (2.09%) Spring Boot
13 134 (2.08%) JSON
14 123 (1.91%) SAML
15 122 (1.89%) SOAP
16 120 (1.86%) OpenID
17 117 (1.81%) Middleware
18 110 (1.70%) HTML
19 104 (1.61%) YAML
20 98 (1.52%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 650 (10.07%) Cloud Native
2 266 (4.12%) Onboarding
3 237 (3.67%) Product Ownership
4 200 (3.10%) Hybrid Cloud
5 193 (2.99%) Data Centre
6 169 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
7 160 (2.48%) Distributed Systems
8 157 (2.43%) Security Posture
9 148 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
10 135 (2.09%) Public Cloud
11 124 (1.92%) AI Agents
12 89 (1.38%) Data Structures
13 87 (1.35%) Replication
14 75 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
15 74 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 67 (1.04%) PKI
17 60 (0.93%) Low-Code
18 59 (0.91%) Enterprise Cloud
19 58 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
20 56 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 745 (11.55%) Windows
2 330 (5.11%) Linux
3 223 (3.46%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 64 (0.99%) Mac OS
5 64 (0.99%) Unix
6 61 (0.95%) Apple iOS
7 58 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 56 (0.87%) VMS
9 49 (0.76%) Android
10 28 (0.43%) Ubuntu
11 27 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
13 14 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 12 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.17%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.093%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.093%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,392 (37.07%) DevOps
2 1,982 (30.71%) CI/CD
3 1,481 (22.95%) Agile
4 948 (14.69%) Analytics
5 933 (14.46%) AI
6 931 (14.43%) Infrastructure as Code
7 921 (14.27%) Problem-Solving
8 906 (14.04%) Migration
9 731 (11.33%) Data Modelling
10 683 (10.58%) Stakeholder Management
11 634 (9.82%) Data Pipeline
12 623 (9.65%) Continuous Improvement
13 614 (9.51%) Business Intelligence
14 613 (9.50%) ETL
15 591 (9.16%) Roadmaps
16 563 (8.72%) Containerisation
17 547 (8.48%) Data Engineering
18 543 (8.41%) Microservices
19 538 (8.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 477 (7.39%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,534 (23.77%) Python
2 1,374 (21.29%) SQL
3 687 (10.65%) PowerShell
4 536 (8.31%) Java
5 522 (8.09%) C#
6 364 (5.64%) JavaScript
7 228 (3.53%) Bash
8 225 (3.49%) TypeScript
9 209 (3.24%) Bicep
10 86 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.27%) Scala
12 79 (1.22%) T-SQL
13 71 (1.10%) Go
14 46 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 35 (0.54%) PL/SQL
17 34 (0.53%) R
18 24 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 23 (0.36%) C++
20 15 (0.23%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,591 (24.66%) Security Cleared
2 1,335 (20.69%) SC Cleared
3 468 (7.25%) Degree
4 358 (5.55%) Azure Certification
5 200 (3.10%) CISSP
6 176 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
7 157 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
8 152 (2.36%) DV Cleared
9 145 (2.25%) Microsoft Certification
10 129 (2.00%) AWS Certification
11 116 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
12 107 (1.66%) CISM
13 75 (1.16%) CCNP
14 68 (1.05%) PMP
15 61 (0.95%) PMI Certification
16 59 (0.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 51 (0.79%) Master's Degree
18 46 (0.71%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
19 41 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 455 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 336 (5.21%) QA
3 313 (4.85%) GDPR
4 252 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 237 (3.67%) NIST
6 111 (1.72%) Accessibility
7 84 (1.30%) NCSC
8 81 (1.26%) SLA
9 76 (1.18%) PCI DSS
10 68 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
11 60 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 46 (0.71%) PMO
13 44 (0.68%) GRC
13 44 (0.68%) WCAG
14 34 (0.53%) HIPAA
15 26 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 21 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 16 (0.25%) ISO 20022
18 15 (0.23%) PSD2
System Software
1 833 (12.91%) Active Directory
2 671 (10.40%) Docker
3 192 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 112 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
5 103 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
6 95 (1.47%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.98%) vSphere
8 47 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.42%) Firmware
9 27 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.31%) NFS
11 17 (0.26%) Postfix
12 10 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.12%) Varnish
14 6 (0.093%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.093%) KVM
14 6 (0.093%) RACF
15 5 (0.077%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 5 (0.077%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 5 (0.077%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,014 (15.71%) Terraform
2 908 (14.07%) Kubernetes
3 350 (5.42%) Microsoft Intune
4 295 (4.57%) Ansible
5 178 (2.76%) Grafana
6 153 (2.37%) Prometheus
7 146 (2.26%) Single Sign-On
8 95 (1.47%) SCCM
9 73 (1.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.57%) Progress Chef
11 34 (0.53%) Puppet
12 33 (0.51%) Argo
13 32 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
14 31 (0.48%) Istio
15 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
16 21 (0.33%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.25%) HP ALM
19 14 (0.22%) linkerd
19 14 (0.22%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,097 (32.50%) Microsoft
2 645 (10.00%) Databricks
3 291 (4.51%) ServiceNow
4 264 (4.09%) VMware
5 255 (3.95%) Oracle
6 243 (3.77%) Google
7 187 (2.90%) SAP
8 176 (2.73%) Cisco
9 159 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 140 (2.17%) Splunk
11 138 (2.14%) CyberArk
12 121 (1.88%) Palo Alto
13 98 (1.52%) Foundry
13 98 (1.52%) Salesforce
14 87 (1.35%) Okta
15 70 (1.08%) Dynatrace
16 65 (1.01%) Citrix
17 64 (0.99%) BeyondTrust
18 62 (0.96%) Red Hat
19 60 (0.93%) Zscaler