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

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,300 4,091 5,226
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.90% 15.66% 13.75%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.13% 41.96% 41.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,770 2,750 3,904
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £521 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.71% -4.55% -3.34%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £518 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.43% -4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 25 75
10th Percentile £19.65 £21.42 £17.75
25th Percentile £32.50 £23.80 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -14.76%
75th Percentile £68.75 £65.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £93.75 £76.51 £69.05
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £30.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +86.99% -33.41% -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 12,579 9,749 12,564
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.73% 37.33% 33.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,715 6,469 9,166
10th Percentile £304 £313 £270
25th Percentile £406 £425 £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 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 324 143 303
10th Percentile £14.30 £15.45 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.25 £16.42
Median hourly rate £35.00 £27.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% +22.22% -7.29%
75th Percentile £58.75 £45.59 £47.47
90th Percentile £78.38 £68.75 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £27.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +27.27% +22.22% -6.25%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 2,846 £541 -1.66% 915
North of England -1 700 £475 - 525
South East -2 664 £500 -6.98% 761
Midlands -2 443 £511 +0.99% 297
North West -1 346 £450 - 307
South West +3 335 £504 -4.05% 241
West Midlands +2 334 £540 -1.82% 178
Yorkshire -2 308 £479 +0.74% 152
East of England -1 145 £550 +22.22% 190
East Midlands -4 108 £433 -3.78% 118
North East -3 49 £500 +7.64% 70
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
1 270 (5.09%) SharePoint
2 182 (3.43%) Microsoft Exchange
3 141 (2.66%) Apache Spark
4 126 (2.38%) Confluence
5 78 (1.47%) Apache
6 73 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.45%) CMS
7 24 (0.45%) OpenStack
8 21 (0.40%) SAS
9 14 (0.26%) Appian
10 13 (0.25%) Camunda
11 12 (0.23%) ArcGIS
11 12 (0.23%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.21%) IIS
12 11 (0.21%) nginx
12 11 (0.21%) Skype for Business
12 11 (0.21%) WebLogic
13 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.17%) Mendix
14 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 119 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 92 (1.74%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.89%) MS Visio
4 45 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 35 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.15%) Trello
8 7 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.094%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.094%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.094%) Weka
10 3 (0.057%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.038%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.038%) Windchill
12 1 (0.019%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.019%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.019%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.019%) Revit
Business Applications
1 98 (1.85%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.19%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.19%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.19%) Teamcenter
5 9 (0.17%) Maximo
6 8 (0.15%) Endur
7 7 (0.13%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.094%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.094%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.094%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.094%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.094%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,873 (35.34%) AWS
2 1,095 (20.66%) GCP
3 1,048 (19.77%) Azure DevOps
4 723 (13.64%) Power Platform
5 662 (12.49%) Entra ID
6 644 (12.15%) Microsoft 365
7 531 (10.02%) GitHub
8 373 (7.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 316 (5.96%) Serverless
10 293 (5.53%) GitHub Actions
11 248 (4.68%) Dynamics 365
12 235 (4.43%) SaaS
13 228 (4.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 219 (4.13%) Power Automate
15 206 (3.89%) Azure AKS
16 198 (3.74%) Azure Logic Apps
16 198 (3.74%) Azure Monitor
17 197 (3.72%) Azure Functions
18 192 (3.62%) PaaS
19 181 (3.42%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 358 (6.75%) Firewall
2 244 (4.60%) DNS
3 180 (3.40%) VPN
4 151 (2.85%) DHCP
5 149 (2.81%) Network Security
6 125 (2.36%) WAN
7 92 (1.74%) TCP/IP
8 88 (1.66%) LAN
9 70 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
10 64 (1.21%) Kerberos
11 62 (1.17%) VLAN
12 60 (1.13%) SD-WAN
13 42 (0.79%) HTTP
14 33 (0.62%) BGP
15 30 (0.57%) Internet
16 29 (0.55%) Wireless
17 26 (0.49%) MPLS
18 25 (0.47%) SSL
19 24 (0.45%) SAN
20 22 (0.42%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 503 (9.49%) Power BI
2 299 (5.64%) SQL Server
3 254 (4.79%) Data Warehouse
4 245 (4.62%) Data Lake
5 181 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
6 176 (3.32%) Azure SQL Database
7 165 (3.11%) NoSQL
8 118 (2.23%) Metadata
9 113 (2.13%) Relational Database
10 87 (1.64%) Delta Lake
11 85 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 74 (1.40%) MongoDB
13 62 (1.17%) Big Data
13 62 (1.17%) Tableau
14 61 (1.15%) Oracle Database
15 58 (1.09%) MySQL
16 54 (1.02%) BigQuery
17 47 (0.89%) Redis
18 45 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
19 38 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 394 (7.43%) Git
2 366 (6.91%) JIRA
3 263 (4.96%) Jenkins
4 198 (3.74%) GitLab
5 77 (1.45%) Postman
5 77 (1.45%) Selenium
6 52 (0.98%) SonarQube
7 43 (0.81%) JUnit
8 41 (0.77%) MLflow
9 40 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 36 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
10 36 (0.68%) REST Assured
11 35 (0.66%) JMeter
12 30 (0.57%) Cypress.io
13 28 (0.53%) Visual Studio
14 27 (0.51%) Artifactory
14 27 (0.51%) Maven
15 24 (0.45%) Bitbucket
16 23 (0.43%) CircleCI
16 23 (0.43%) Gradle
General
1 1,694 (31.96%) Social Skills
2 951 (17.94%) Finance
3 578 (10.91%) Public Sector
4 538 (10.15%) Analytical Skills
5 325 (6.13%) Banking
6 184 (3.47%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (1.98%) Legal
8 100 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 83 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
10 80 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
10 80 (1.51%) Retail
11 78 (1.47%) Marketing
12 68 (1.28%) Investment Banking
13 59 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
14 56 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 53 (1.00%) Law
16 51 (0.96%) Financial Institution
17 42 (0.79%) Manufacturing
18 38 (0.72%) Local Government
18 38 (0.72%) Military
Job Titles
1 860 (16.23%) Architect
2 756 (14.26%) Developer
3 561 (10.58%) Senior
4 424 (8.00%) Azure Engineer
5 409 (7.72%) Data Engineer
6 376 (7.09%) Lead
7 365 (6.89%) Analyst
8 267 (5.04%) Solutions Architect
9 264 (4.98%) DevOps Engineer
10 217 (4.09%) Consultant
11 168 (3.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 141 (2.66%) Security Engineer
13 138 (2.60%) Senior Developer
14 134 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
15 132 (2.49%) Azure Architect
16 123 (2.32%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 121 (2.28%) Platform Engineer
18 107 (2.02%) Azure Data Engineer
19 105 (1.98%) Support Engineer
20 100 (1.89%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 418 (7.89%) .NET
2 380 (7.17%) REST
3 237 (4.47%) React
4 205 (3.87%) Kafka
5 201 (3.79%) RESTful
6 192 (3.62%) PySpark
7 180 (3.40%) Node.js
8 173 (3.26%) OAuth
9 155 (2.92%) Spring
10 145 (2.74%) LDAP
11 141 (2.66%) Spring Boot
12 138 (2.60%) AngularJS
12 138 (2.60%) HTML
13 128 (2.42%) SOAP
14 123 (2.32%) JSON
15 121 (2.28%) PyTorch
16 119 (2.25%) CSS
17 113 (2.13%) SAML
18 112 (2.11%) TensorFlow
19 106 (2.00%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 469 (8.85%) Cloud Native
2 212 (4.00%) Onboarding
3 176 (3.32%) Product Ownership
4 153 (2.89%) Enterprise Software
5 150 (2.83%) Hybrid Cloud
6 147 (2.77%) Security Posture
7 137 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
8 109 (2.06%) Data Centre
9 102 (1.92%) Public Cloud
10 81 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
11 78 (1.47%) Replication
12 74 (1.40%) AI Agents
13 69 (1.30%) Management Information System
14 66 (1.25%) Data Structures
15 57 (1.08%) Algorithms
15 57 (1.08%) Low-Code
16 49 (0.92%) CMDB
16 49 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
17 48 (0.91%) Data Protection Act
18 47 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 631 (11.91%) Windows
2 315 (5.94%) Linux
3 190 (3.58%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.25%) Windows 10
5 68 (1.28%) Unix
6 53 (1.00%) VMS
7 44 (0.83%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.79%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.70%) Android
10 27 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.36%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
13 11 (0.21%) CentOS
14 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
15 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.094%) AIX
17 3 (0.057%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,940 (36.60%) DevOps
2 1,553 (29.30%) CI/CD
3 1,299 (24.51%) Agile
4 1,023 (19.30%) Problem-Solving
5 811 (15.30%) Analytics
6 728 (13.74%) AI
7 680 (12.83%) Infrastructure as Code
8 620 (11.70%) Migration
9 576 (10.87%) Business Intelligence
10 554 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
11 526 (9.92%) Data Modelling
12 520 (9.81%) Containerisation
13 473 (8.92%) Continuous Improvement
14 468 (8.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 465 (8.77%) Machine Learning
16 453 (8.55%) ETL
17 450 (8.49%) Microservices
18 440 (8.30%) Data Pipeline
19 423 (7.98%) Test Automation
20 408 (7.70%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,344 (25.36%) Python
2 1,169 (22.06%) SQL
3 599 (11.30%) PowerShell
4 455 (8.58%) Java
5 450 (8.49%) C#
6 396 (7.47%) JavaScript
7 225 (4.25%) Bash
8 218 (4.11%) TypeScript
9 151 (2.85%) Bicep
10 91 (1.72%) Scala
11 78 (1.47%) Go
12 74 (1.40%) PL/SQL
13 64 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
14 58 (1.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 52 (0.98%) T-SQL
16 45 (0.85%) R
17 34 (0.64%) C++
18 29 (0.55%) Shell Script
19 26 (0.49%) PHP
20 20 (0.38%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,289 (24.32%) Security Cleared
2 1,065 (20.09%) SC Cleared
3 442 (8.34%) Degree
4 319 (6.02%) Azure Certification
5 181 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 155 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
7 142 (2.68%) CISSP
8 113 (2.13%) DV Cleared
9 112 (2.11%) AWS Certification
10 90 (1.70%) CISM
11 79 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
12 73 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
12 73 (1.38%) Master's Degree
13 44 (0.83%) PMI Certification
14 39 (0.74%) ISTQB
14 39 (0.74%) PMP
14 39 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
15 37 (0.70%) CCNP
16 30 (0.57%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 25 (0.47%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 342 (6.45%) GDPR
2 327 (6.17%) Data Quality
3 270 (5.09%) QA
4 268 (5.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 208 (3.92%) NIST
6 99 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.55%) NCSC
8 70 (1.32%) PCI DSS
9 48 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 47 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
11 44 (0.83%) SLA
12 36 (0.68%) HIPAA
13 34 (0.64%) SOC 2
14 30 (0.57%) PMO
15 29 (0.55%) WCAG
16 28 (0.53%) EU AI Act
16 28 (0.53%) PSD2
17 27 (0.51%) GRC
18 25 (0.47%) ISO 20022
19 19 (0.36%) SEPA
System Software
1 742 (14.00%) Active Directory
2 646 (12.19%) Docker
3 176 (3.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 83 (1.57%) Hyper-V
5 70 (1.32%) Virtual Desktop
6 67 (1.26%) Virtual Machines
7 59 (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 8 (0.15%) KVM
11 8 (0.15%) Postfix
12 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 7 (0.13%) Dovecot
12 7 (0.13%) Firmware
12 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.11%) Lustre
13 6 (0.11%) NFS
Systems Management
1 784 (14.79%) Terraform
2 766 (14.45%) Kubernetes
3 310 (5.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 237 (4.47%) Ansible
5 139 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
6 137 (2.58%) SCCM
7 125 (2.36%) Grafana
8 115 (2.17%) Prometheus
9 69 (1.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.70%) Argo
11 30 (0.57%) Puppet
12 22 (0.42%) Nessus
13 21 (0.40%) Istio
14 19 (0.36%) Progress Chef
15 18 (0.34%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.34%) Kibana
15 18 (0.34%) Nmap
15 18 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.32%) vRealize
17 16 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,757 (33.15%) Microsoft
2 524 (9.89%) Databricks
3 317 (5.98%) Oracle
4 288 (5.43%) Google
5 249 (4.70%) ServiceNow
6 229 (4.32%) VMware
7 148 (2.79%) SAP
8 143 (2.70%) OpenAI
9 138 (2.60%) Splunk
10 136 (2.57%) Cisco
11 110 (2.08%) CyberArk
11 110 (2.08%) Salesforce
12 84 (1.58%) Palo Alto
13 75 (1.42%) Foundry
14 69 (1.30%) Okta
15 63 (1.19%) BeyondTrust
15 63 (1.19%) Citrix
16 60 (1.13%) Red Hat
17 52 (0.98%) IBM
18 48 (0.91%) Fortinet