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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,054 4,134 5,118
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.91% 15.33% 14.29%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.83% 41.64% 42.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,580 2,781 3,821
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £419 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -4.26%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £711 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 30 60
10th Percentile £16.25 £19.97 £17.75
25th Percentile £26.43 £23.80 £22.58
Median hourly rate £54.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +55.71% -24.21% -9.45%
75th Percentile £73.20 £60.56 £54.06
90th Percentile £93.75 £75.67 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £51.25 £28.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +83.04% -39.37% +2.62%

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 12,082 9,927 12,171
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 38.04% 36.82% 33.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,365 6,613 8,879
10th Percentile £302 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £422 £424
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £734
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 276 136 236
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.51 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.78 £21.41 £17.72
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.75 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.87% +27.78% -0.57%
75th Percentile £57.25 £47.81 £50.40
90th Percentile £76.96 £68.75 £74.38
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £27.50 £23.00
% change year-on-year +1.82% +19.57% +2.22%

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 15 January 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 15 January 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 15 January 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 2,723 £543 -1.36% 866
North of England 0 651 £465 +2.42% 615
South East -2 631 £492 -6.29% 938
Midlands +1 436 £525 +1.45% 352
West Midlands +2 331 £550 - 172
North West 0 316 £450 - 322
South West +5 308 £512 -2.57% 307
Yorkshire 0 297 £475 - 198
East of England -3 132 £500 +15.94% 322
East Midlands -1 104 £437 -3.00% 173
North East -7 42 £488 +1.30% 102
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
1 253 (5.01%) SharePoint
2 169 (3.34%) Microsoft Exchange
3 124 (2.45%) Apache Spark
4 116 (2.30%) Confluence
5 75 (1.48%) Apache
6 69 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.46%) OpenStack
8 22 (0.44%) SAS
9 19 (0.38%) CMS
9 19 (0.38%) WebLogic
10 14 (0.28%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.26%) nginx
12 11 (0.22%) Appian
12 11 (0.22%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.22%) IIS
12 11 (0.22%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.18%) Camunda
13 9 (0.18%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.18%) Mendix
14 8 (0.16%) Smallworld
Applications
1 115 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 85 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
3 44 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 41 (0.81%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.16%) Trello
9 5 (0.099%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.099%) Weka
10 3 (0.059%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.040%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.040%) Windchill
12 1 (0.020%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.020%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.020%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.020%) Revit
12 1 (0.020%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.020%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.020%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 91 (1.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 58 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.18%) Maximo
5 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
6 8 (0.16%) Endur
6 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
6 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 8 (0.16%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.14%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.12%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.12%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.099%) Cloudability
9 5 (0.099%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.099%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.099%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.079%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,827 (36.15%) AWS
2 1,056 (20.89%) GCP
3 989 (19.57%) Azure DevOps
4 683 (13.51%) Power Platform
5 604 (11.95%) Microsoft 365
6 597 (11.81%) Entra ID
7 514 (10.17%) GitHub
8 346 (6.85%) Azure Data Factory
9 297 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
10 292 (5.78%) Serverless
11 242 (4.79%) Dynamics 365
12 222 (4.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 217 (4.29%) SaaS
14 210 (4.16%) Power Automate
15 205 (4.06%) Azure AKS
16 198 (3.92%) Azure Monitor
17 189 (3.74%) Azure Logic Apps
18 185 (3.66%) Azure Functions
19 179 (3.54%) PowerApps
20 177 (3.50%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 355 (7.02%) Firewall
2 211 (4.17%) DNS
3 165 (3.26%) VPN
4 153 (3.03%) Network Security
5 122 (2.41%) WAN
6 119 (2.35%) DHCP
7 95 (1.88%) TCP/IP
8 81 (1.60%) LAN
9 63 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.19%) SD-WAN
10 60 (1.19%) VLAN
11 44 (0.87%) HTTP
12 32 (0.63%) BGP
13 31 (0.61%) Kerberos
14 30 (0.59%) Wireless
15 29 (0.57%) Internet
16 24 (0.47%) MPLS
16 24 (0.47%) SAN
17 22 (0.44%) SSL
18 21 (0.42%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 492 (9.73%) Power BI
2 280 (5.54%) SQL Server
3 242 (4.79%) Data Lake
4 231 (4.57%) Data Warehouse
5 190 (3.76%) PostgreSQL
6 168 (3.32%) Azure SQL Database
7 159 (3.15%) NoSQL
8 109 (2.16%) Relational Database
9 107 (2.12%) Metadata
10 78 (1.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 76 (1.50%) Delta Lake
11 76 (1.50%) MongoDB
12 61 (1.21%) Oracle Database
13 59 (1.17%) Big Data
14 58 (1.15%) Tableau
15 56 (1.11%) MySQL
16 50 (0.99%) BigQuery
17 45 (0.89%) Redis
18 40 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
18 40 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 387 (7.66%) Git
2 343 (6.79%) JIRA
3 274 (5.42%) Jenkins
4 202 (4.00%) GitLab
5 79 (1.56%) Selenium
6 72 (1.42%) Postman
7 54 (1.07%) SonarQube
8 46 (0.91%) JUnit
9 39 (0.77%) Cucumber
10 37 (0.73%) MLflow
11 36 (0.71%) Oracle APEX
12 33 (0.65%) CircleCI
13 32 (0.63%) Maven
14 30 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 30 (0.59%) JMeter
15 29 (0.57%) REST Assured
16 28 (0.55%) Bitbucket
17 27 (0.53%) Gradle
18 25 (0.49%) Artifactory
19 23 (0.46%) ERwin
General
1 1,618 (32.01%) Social Skills
2 926 (18.32%) Finance
3 562 (11.12%) Public Sector
4 487 (9.64%) Analytical Skills
5 321 (6.35%) Banking
6 166 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
7 108 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 87 (1.72%) Legal
9 79 (1.56%) Retail
10 78 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
11 76 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
11 76 (1.50%) Marketing
12 71 (1.40%) Investment Banking
13 54 (1.07%) Telecoms
14 50 (0.99%) Financial Institution
14 50 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
15 49 (0.97%) Law
16 48 (0.95%) Manufacturing
17 41 (0.81%) Military
18 39 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 806 (15.95%) Architect
2 724 (14.33%) Developer
3 541 (10.70%) Senior
4 385 (7.62%) Azure Engineer
5 382 (7.56%) Data Engineer
6 367 (7.26%) Lead
7 350 (6.93%) Analyst
8 268 (5.30%) DevOps Engineer
9 252 (4.99%) Solutions Architect
10 196 (3.88%) Consultant
11 154 (3.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 149 (2.95%) Security Engineer
13 135 (2.67%) Senior Developer
14 129 (2.55%) Cloud Engineer
15 123 (2.43%) Azure Architect
16 121 (2.39%) Platform Engineer
17 107 (2.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 104 (2.06%) Azure Data Engineer
19 100 (1.98%) Software Engineer
20 96 (1.90%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 407 (8.05%) .NET
2 342 (6.77%) REST
3 223 (4.41%) React
4 191 (3.78%) Kafka
5 189 (3.74%) RESTful
6 184 (3.64%) PySpark
7 175 (3.46%) Node.js
8 153 (3.03%) Spring
9 152 (3.01%) OAuth
10 137 (2.71%) HTML
11 130 (2.57%) AngularJS
12 127 (2.51%) Spring Boot
13 121 (2.39%) JSON
14 120 (2.37%) SOAP
15 116 (2.30%) PyTorch
16 114 (2.26%) CSS
17 113 (2.24%) LDAP
18 108 (2.14%) TensorFlow
19 103 (2.04%) Middleware
20 94 (1.86%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 451 (8.92%) Cloud Native
2 189 (3.74%) Onboarding
3 163 (3.23%) Product Ownership
4 155 (3.07%) Enterprise Software
5 148 (2.93%) Hybrid Cloud
6 145 (2.87%) Security Posture
7 134 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
8 113 (2.24%) Data Centre
9 96 (1.90%) Public Cloud
10 87 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.35%) Management Information System
12 63 (1.25%) AI Agents
12 63 (1.25%) Algorithms
13 61 (1.21%) Replication
14 60 (1.19%) Data Structures
15 56 (1.11%) Low-Code
16 51 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
17 47 (0.93%) CMDB
18 46 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
19 45 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 592 (11.71%) Windows
2 326 (6.45%) Linux
3 175 (3.46%) Windows Server
4 113 (2.24%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.56%) Unix
6 55 (1.09%) VMS
7 45 (0.89%) Apple iOS
8 41 (0.81%) Android
9 40 (0.79%) Mac OS
10 27 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 20 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 13 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
13 9 (0.18%) CentOS
13 9 (0.18%) Solaris
14 6 (0.12%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
15 5 (0.099%) AIX
16 4 (0.079%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,842 (36.45%) DevOps
2 1,478 (29.24%) CI/CD
3 1,237 (24.48%) Agile
4 972 (19.23%) Problem-Solving
5 754 (14.92%) Analytics
6 659 (13.04%) Infrastructure as Code
7 642 (12.70%) AI
8 582 (11.52%) Migration
9 566 (11.20%) Business Intelligence
10 516 (10.21%) Stakeholder Management
11 502 (9.93%) Containerisation
12 480 (9.50%) Data Modelling
13 456 (9.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 443 (8.77%) Continuous Improvement
15 427 (8.45%) Machine Learning
16 423 (8.37%) Microservices
17 411 (8.13%) ETL
18 408 (8.07%) Data Pipeline
19 405 (8.01%) Test Automation
20 373 (7.38%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,295 (25.62%) Python
2 1,111 (21.98%) SQL
3 543 (10.74%) PowerShell
4 461 (9.12%) Java
5 420 (8.31%) C#
6 385 (7.62%) JavaScript
7 232 (4.59%) Bash
8 197 (3.90%) TypeScript
9 152 (3.01%) Bicep
10 83 (1.64%) Go
11 82 (1.62%) Scala
12 74 (1.46%) PL/SQL
13 65 (1.29%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (1.03%) T-SQL
15 51 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 50 (0.99%) R
17 32 (0.63%) C++
18 28 (0.55%) Shell Script
19 27 (0.53%) PHP
20 23 (0.46%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,233 (24.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,016 (20.10%) SC Cleared
3 424 (8.39%) Degree
4 305 (6.03%) Azure Certification
5 170 (3.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 146 (2.89%) CISSP
7 145 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
8 117 (2.31%) DV Cleared
9 109 (2.16%) AWS Certification
10 91 (1.80%) CISM
11 85 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
12 74 (1.46%) Master's Degree
13 50 (0.99%) BPSS Clearance
14 41 (0.81%) PMI Certification
15 40 (0.79%) MCP
16 36 (0.71%) CCNP
16 36 (0.71%) PMP
16 36 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
17 35 (0.69%) ISTQB
18 32 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 324 (6.41%) GDPR
2 295 (5.84%) Data Quality
3 277 (5.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 266 (5.26%) QA
5 213 (4.21%) NIST
6 94 (1.86%) Accessibility
7 74 (1.46%) NCSC
7 74 (1.46%) PCI DSS
8 48 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
9 37 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 37 (0.73%) SLA
10 35 (0.69%) SOC 2
11 33 (0.65%) HIPAA
12 29 (0.57%) PMO
13 28 (0.55%) EU AI Act
13 28 (0.55%) PSD2
14 27 (0.53%) WCAG
15 23 (0.46%) GRC
16 20 (0.40%) ISO 20022
17 16 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 679 (13.43%) Active Directory
2 657 (13.00%) Docker
3 164 (3.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (1.50%) Hyper-V
5 63 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
6 62 (1.23%) Virtual Desktop
7 51 (1.01%) vSphere
8 19 (0.38%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.28%) Squid
10 12 (0.24%) DFS Replication
11 10 (0.20%) KVM
11 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 9 (0.18%) Dovecot
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
12 9 (0.18%) Postfix
13 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.14%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.14%) NFS
14 7 (0.14%) Snort
14 7 (0.14%) zsh
Systems Management
1 755 (14.94%) Kubernetes
2 751 (14.86%) Terraform
3 280 (5.54%) Microsoft Intune
4 238 (4.71%) Ansible
5 128 (2.53%) Grafana
6 126 (2.49%) SCCM
7 122 (2.41%) Prometheus
8 112 (2.22%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.73%) Argo
11 31 (0.61%) Puppet
12 22 (0.44%) Nessus
13 20 (0.40%) Kibana
14 19 (0.38%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.36%) Istio
15 18 (0.36%) Nmap
15 18 (0.36%) Progress Chef
15 18 (0.36%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.34%) vRealize
17 16 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,641 (32.47%) Microsoft
2 501 (9.91%) Databricks
3 317 (6.27%) Oracle
4 280 (5.54%) Google
5 240 (4.75%) ServiceNow
6 212 (4.19%) VMware
7 153 (3.03%) Cisco
8 146 (2.89%) Splunk
9 142 (2.81%) SAP
10 121 (2.39%) OpenAI
11 106 (2.10%) Salesforce
12 103 (2.04%) CyberArk
13 85 (1.68%) Palo Alto
14 66 (1.31%) Citrix
15 61 (1.21%) Red Hat
16 59 (1.17%) BeyondTrust
17 58 (1.15%) Foundry
18 55 (1.09%) IBM
19 54 (1.07%) Okta
20 52 (1.03%) Dynatrace