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

6 months to
1 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,230 4,110 5,273
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.90% 15.51% 13.83%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.07% 41.79% 41.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,724 2,754 3,933
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.90% -4.55% -3.41%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.19% -4.55% -2.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 25 77
10th Percentile £18.35 £21.42 £17.75
25th Percentile £30.43 £23.80 £22.30
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -14.76%
75th Percentile £68.00 £65.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £93.75 £76.51 £67.95
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -9.45%

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 12,432 9,835 12,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.80% 37.12% 33.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,617 6,513 9,250
10th Percentile £304 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £423 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £726
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 312 142 298
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.45 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.25 £16.57
Median hourly rate £33.32 £27.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +21.15% +22.22% -10.00%
75th Percentile £58.75 £45.89 £48.75
90th Percentile £77.48 £68.75 £66.29
UK median hourly rate £32.75 £27.50 £22.75
% change year-on-year +19.09% +20.88% -5.21%

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 1 February 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 1 February 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 1 February 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 0 2,813 £540 -1.74% 1,114
North of England -1 684 £475 +1.33% 551
South East -2 654 £500 -6.98% 804
Midlands -1 444 £513 -1.30% 307
North West -1 342 £450 - 324
West Midlands +2 334 £545 -0.91% 176
South West +4 328 £509 -3.10% 245
Yorkshire -1 298 £484 +0.73% 162
East of England 0 141 £538 +13.16% 201
East Midlands -3 109 £433 -3.78% 131
North East -6 47 £500 +7.64% 68
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
1 265 (5.07%) SharePoint
2 179 (3.42%) Microsoft Exchange
3 138 (2.64%) Apache Spark
4 124 (2.37%) Confluence
5 76 (1.45%) Apache
6 70 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.48%) OpenStack
8 24 (0.46%) CMS
9 21 (0.40%) SAS
10 13 (0.25%) Appian
10 13 (0.25%) Camunda
11 12 (0.23%) HCL Notes
11 12 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.21%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.21%) IIS
12 11 (0.21%) nginx
12 11 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.17%) Mendix
14 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 116 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 92 (1.76%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.90%) MS Visio
4 45 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.15%) Trello
8 7 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.096%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.096%) Weka
10 4 (0.076%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.057%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.038%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.038%) Windchill
13 1 (0.019%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.019%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.019%) FrameMaker
13 1 (0.019%) Revit
Business Applications
1 99 (1.89%) Dynamics CRM
2 58 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.17%) Maximo
5 9 (0.17%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.15%) Endur
7 7 (0.13%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.096%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.096%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.096%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.096%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.096%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.096%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,840 (35.18%) AWS
2 1,075 (20.55%) GCP
3 1,040 (19.89%) Azure DevOps
4 715 (13.67%) Power Platform
5 655 (12.52%) Entra ID
6 639 (12.22%) Microsoft 365
7 527 (10.08%) GitHub
8 367 (7.02%) Azure Data Factory
9 307 (5.87%) Serverless
10 290 (5.54%) GitHub Actions
11 250 (4.78%) Dynamics 365
12 227 (4.34%) SaaS
13 226 (4.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 218 (4.17%) Power Automate
15 201 (3.84%) Azure AKS
16 196 (3.75%) Azure Monitor
17 195 (3.73%) Azure Logic Apps
18 193 (3.69%) Azure Functions
19 185 (3.54%) PaaS
20 180 (3.44%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 355 (6.79%) Firewall
2 240 (4.59%) DNS
3 177 (3.38%) VPN
4 149 (2.85%) DHCP
4 149 (2.85%) Network Security
5 122 (2.33%) WAN
6 92 (1.76%) TCP/IP
7 84 (1.61%) LAN
8 68 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
9 62 (1.19%) Kerberos
10 61 (1.17%) VLAN
11 60 (1.15%) SD-WAN
12 42 (0.80%) HTTP
13 33 (0.63%) BGP
14 30 (0.57%) Internet
15 29 (0.55%) Wireless
16 26 (0.50%) MPLS
17 23 (0.44%) SAN
17 23 (0.44%) SSL
18 22 (0.42%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 500 (9.56%) Power BI
2 293 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 249 (4.76%) Data Warehouse
4 238 (4.55%) Data Lake
5 176 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
6 175 (3.35%) Azure SQL Database
7 162 (3.10%) NoSQL
8 115 (2.20%) Metadata
9 111 (2.12%) Relational Database
10 86 (1.64%) Delta Lake
11 84 (1.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 73 (1.40%) MongoDB
13 62 (1.19%) Tableau
14 61 (1.17%) Oracle Database
15 60 (1.15%) Big Data
16 54 (1.03%) MySQL
17 53 (1.01%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.88%) Redis
19 44 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
20 38 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 391 (7.48%) Git
2 362 (6.92%) JIRA
3 264 (5.05%) Jenkins
4 199 (3.80%) GitLab
5 79 (1.51%) Selenium
6 78 (1.49%) Postman
7 54 (1.03%) SonarQube
8 42 (0.80%) JUnit
9 39 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 38 (0.73%) MLflow
11 36 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
12 34 (0.65%) JMeter
12 34 (0.65%) REST Assured
13 31 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.55%) Artifactory
15 28 (0.54%) Maven
16 27 (0.52%) Visual Studio
17 25 (0.48%) Bitbucket
17 25 (0.48%) CircleCI
18 24 (0.46%) Gradle
General
1 1,679 (32.10%) Social Skills
2 939 (17.95%) Finance
3 570 (10.90%) Public Sector
4 530 (10.13%) Analytical Skills
5 325 (6.21%) Banking
6 179 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
7 102 (1.95%) Legal
8 101 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
10 80 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
10 80 (1.53%) Retail
11 79 (1.51%) Marketing
12 67 (1.28%) Investment Banking
13 56 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
14 54 (1.03%) Telecoms
15 52 (0.99%) Law
16 51 (0.98%) Financial Institution
17 42 (0.80%) Manufacturing
18 37 (0.71%) Local Government
18 37 (0.71%) Military
Job Titles
1 847 (16.20%) Architect
2 747 (14.28%) Developer
3 548 (10.48%) Senior
4 415 (7.93%) Azure Engineer
5 399 (7.63%) Data Engineer
6 367 (7.02%) Lead
7 362 (6.92%) Analyst
8 267 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
9 265 (5.07%) Solutions Architect
10 212 (4.05%) Consultant
11 167 (3.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 141 (2.70%) Security Engineer
13 137 (2.62%) Senior Developer
14 131 (2.50%) Azure Architect
14 131 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
15 120 (2.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 118 (2.26%) Platform Engineer
17 104 (1.99%) Azure Data Engineer
18 103 (1.97%) Support Engineer
19 101 (1.93%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 414 (7.92%) .NET
2 373 (7.13%) REST
3 234 (4.47%) React
4 199 (3.80%) RESTful
5 198 (3.79%) Kafka
6 190 (3.63%) PySpark
7 177 (3.38%) Node.js
8 168 (3.21%) OAuth
9 150 (2.87%) Spring
10 145 (2.77%) LDAP
11 139 (2.66%) HTML
12 137 (2.62%) Spring Boot
13 136 (2.60%) AngularJS
14 124 (2.37%) SOAP
15 123 (2.35%) JSON
16 119 (2.28%) CSS
17 118 (2.26%) PyTorch
18 110 (2.10%) TensorFlow
19 109 (2.08%) SAML
20 106 (2.03%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 459 (8.78%) Cloud Native
2 209 (4.00%) Onboarding
3 175 (3.35%) Product Ownership
4 153 (2.93%) Enterprise Software
5 149 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
6 147 (2.81%) Security Posture
7 136 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
8 105 (2.01%) Data Centre
9 101 (1.93%) Public Cloud
10 79 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
10 79 (1.51%) Replication
11 72 (1.38%) AI Agents
12 67 (1.28%) Management Information System
13 64 (1.22%) Data Structures
14 56 (1.07%) Low-Code
15 55 (1.05%) Algorithms
16 49 (0.94%) CMDB
16 49 (0.94%) Data Protection Act
16 49 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
17 48 (0.92%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 624 (11.93%) Windows
2 317 (6.06%) Linux
3 188 (3.59%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.28%) Windows 10
5 69 (1.32%) Unix
6 52 (0.99%) VMS
7 45 (0.86%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.71%) Android
10 27 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.36%) Ubuntu
13 18 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
14 11 (0.21%) CentOS
15 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 8 (0.15%) Solaris
17 7 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.096%) AIX
19 3 (0.057%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,919 (36.69%) DevOps
2 1,525 (29.16%) CI/CD
3 1,282 (24.51%) Agile
4 1,017 (19.45%) Problem-Solving
5 798 (15.26%) Analytics
6 707 (13.52%) AI
7 670 (12.81%) Infrastructure as Code
8 613 (11.72%) Migration
9 572 (10.94%) Business Intelligence
10 542 (10.36%) Stakeholder Management
11 516 (9.87%) Data Modelling
12 515 (9.85%) Containerisation
13 470 (8.99%) Continuous Improvement
14 464 (8.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 452 (8.64%) Machine Learning
16 443 (8.47%) ETL
17 435 (8.32%) Microservices
18 432 (8.26%) Data Pipeline
19 419 (8.01%) Test Automation
20 398 (7.61%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,318 (25.20%) Python
2 1,147 (21.93%) SQL
3 595 (11.38%) PowerShell
4 447 (8.55%) Java
5 445 (8.51%) C#
6 393 (7.51%) JavaScript
7 225 (4.30%) Bash
8 216 (4.13%) TypeScript
9 149 (2.85%) Bicep
10 90 (1.72%) Scala
11 78 (1.49%) Go
12 73 (1.40%) PL/SQL
13 62 (1.19%) Kusto Query Language
14 58 (1.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 52 (0.99%) T-SQL
16 45 (0.86%) R
17 33 (0.63%) C++
18 30 (0.57%) Shell Script
19 25 (0.48%) PHP
20 20 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,281 (24.49%) Security Cleared
2 1,057 (20.21%) SC Cleared
3 438 (8.37%) Degree
4 318 (6.08%) Azure Certification
5 180 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 155 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 141 (2.70%) CISSP
8 113 (2.16%) DV Cleared
9 110 (2.10%) AWS Certification
10 90 (1.72%) CISM
11 78 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
12 72 (1.38%) Master's Degree
13 69 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
14 43 (0.82%) PMI Certification
15 38 (0.73%) ISTQB
15 38 (0.73%) PMP
15 38 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
16 36 (0.69%) CCNP
17 29 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 25 (0.48%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 338 (6.46%) GDPR
2 319 (6.10%) Data Quality
3 272 (5.20%) QA
4 268 (5.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 206 (3.94%) NIST
6 96 (1.84%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.55%) NCSC
8 68 (1.30%) PCI DSS
9 48 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 46 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
11 41 (0.78%) SLA
12 36 (0.69%) HIPAA
13 34 (0.65%) SOC 2
14 30 (0.57%) PMO
15 29 (0.55%) WCAG
16 28 (0.54%) EU AI Act
16 28 (0.54%) PSD2
17 25 (0.48%) GRC
18 24 (0.46%) ISO 20022
19 19 (0.36%) SEPA
System Software
1 738 (14.11%) Active Directory
2 639 (12.22%) Docker
3 175 (3.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 84 (1.61%) Hyper-V
5 70 (1.34%) Virtual Desktop
6 67 (1.28%) Virtual Machines
7 58 (1.11%) vSphere
8 20 (0.38%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.23%) Squid
9 12 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.19%) DFS Replication
11 9 (0.17%) KVM
12 8 (0.15%) Postfix
13 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.13%) Dovecot
13 7 (0.13%) Firmware
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.11%) Lustre
14 6 (0.11%) NFS
Systems Management
1 774 (14.80%) Terraform
2 751 (14.36%) Kubernetes
3 304 (5.81%) Microsoft Intune
4 241 (4.61%) Ansible
5 137 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
6 134 (2.56%) SCCM
7 124 (2.37%) Grafana
8 115 (2.20%) Prometheus
9 68 (1.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.71%) Argo
11 31 (0.59%) Puppet
12 22 (0.42%) Nessus
13 20 (0.38%) Progress Chef
14 19 (0.36%) Istio
15 18 (0.34%) Kibana
15 18 (0.34%) Nmap
15 18 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.33%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.33%) vRealize
17 15 (0.29%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,742 (33.31%) Microsoft
2 521 (9.96%) Databricks
3 313 (5.98%) Oracle
4 282 (5.39%) Google
5 243 (4.65%) ServiceNow
6 226 (4.32%) VMware
7 147 (2.81%) SAP
8 139 (2.66%) OpenAI
9 137 (2.62%) Cisco
10 136 (2.60%) Splunk
11 110 (2.10%) Salesforce
12 108 (2.07%) CyberArk
13 84 (1.61%) Palo Alto
14 75 (1.43%) Foundry
15 67 (1.28%) Okta
16 63 (1.20%) BeyondTrust
16 63 (1.20%) Citrix
17 60 (1.15%) Red Hat
18 51 (0.98%) IBM
19 48 (0.92%) Fortinet