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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,235 4,109 5,165
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.93% 15.44% 13.87%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.05% 41.67% 41.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,735 2,753 3,848
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £418 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -3.51%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £517 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.52% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 26 77
10th Percentile £17.56 £21.78 £17.75
25th Percentile £29.00 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £68.75 £63.94 £59.95
90th Percentile £93.75 £76.35 £67.95
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £28.25 £46.18
% change year-on-year +103.54% -38.83% -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 12,448 9,860 12,427
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.88% 37.06% 33.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,641 6,537 9,068
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 £606 £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 308 138 286
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.60 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £17.00
Median hourly rate £33.09 £27.50 £23.23
Median % change year-on-year +20.31% +18.39% -3.30%
75th Percentile £58.75 £45.89 £49.00
90th Percentile £77.33 £70.25 £66.66
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £27.50 £23.43
% change year-on-year +18.18% +17.40% -0.32%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 2,817 £540 -1.82% 987
North of England -1 683 £468 +1.14% 622
South East -2 648 £492 -7.17% 1,012
Midlands -2 448 £515 -1.67% 369
West Midlands +2 338 £550 - 183
North West -1 338 £450 - 346
South West +5 324 £512 -2.57% 305
Yorkshire -1 301 £479 +0.74% 194
East of England 0 141 £520 +17.18% 306
East Midlands -3 109 £433 -3.78% 183
North East -5 47 £475 -6.17% 86
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
1 264 (5.04%) SharePoint
2 178 (3.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 135 (2.58%) Apache Spark
4 126 (2.41%) Confluence
5 76 (1.45%) Apache
6 70 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.50%) 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%) nginx
11 12 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.21%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.21%) IIS
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 90 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.88%) MS Visio
4 44 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.15%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 8 (0.15%) Trello
8 5 (0.096%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.096%) Weka
9 4 (0.076%) PTC Creo
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
1 101 (1.93%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.17%) Maximo
5 9 (0.17%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.15%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.15%) Endur
6 8 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
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%) 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 1,842 (35.19%) AWS
2 1,081 (20.65%) GCP
3 1,035 (19.77%) Azure DevOps
4 718 (13.72%) Power Platform
5 659 (12.59%) Entra ID
6 637 (12.17%) Microsoft 365
7 532 (10.16%) GitHub
8 366 (6.99%) Azure Data Factory
9 304 (5.81%) Serverless
10 293 (5.60%) GitHub Actions
11 254 (4.85%) Dynamics 365
12 227 (4.34%) SaaS
13 224 (4.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 221 (4.22%) Power Automate
15 202 (3.86%) Azure AKS
16 198 (3.78%) Azure Monitor
17 193 (3.69%) Azure Logic Apps
18 190 (3.63%) Azure Functions
19 186 (3.55%) PaaS
20 181 (3.46%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 353 (6.74%) Firewall
2 239 (4.57%) DNS
3 177 (3.38%) VPN
4 148 (2.83%) DHCP
4 148 (2.83%) Network Security
5 124 (2.37%) WAN
6 92 (1.76%) TCP/IP
7 85 (1.62%) LAN
8 67 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
9 62 (1.18%) VLAN
10 61 (1.17%) Kerberos
11 60 (1.15%) SD-WAN
12 43 (0.82%) HTTP
13 34 (0.65%) BGP
14 30 (0.57%) Internet
15 29 (0.55%) Wireless
16 27 (0.52%) MPLS
17 24 (0.46%) SAN
18 23 (0.44%) SSL
19 22 (0.42%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 507 (9.68%) Power BI
2 293 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 247 (4.72%) Data Warehouse
4 243 (4.64%) Data Lake
5 180 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 176 (3.36%) Azure SQL Database
7 161 (3.08%) NoSQL
8 113 (2.16%) Metadata
9 108 (2.06%) Relational Database
10 86 (1.64%) Delta Lake
11 82 (1.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 76 (1.45%) MongoDB
13 61 (1.17%) Oracle Database
14 59 (1.13%) Big Data
14 59 (1.13%) Tableau
15 56 (1.07%) MySQL
16 54 (1.03%) BigQuery
17 46 (0.88%) Redis
18 44 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
19 39 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 391 (7.47%) Git
2 359 (6.86%) JIRA
3 271 (5.18%) Jenkins
4 202 (3.86%) GitLab
5 79 (1.51%) Postman
5 79 (1.51%) Selenium
6 55 (1.05%) SonarQube
7 43 (0.82%) JUnit
8 39 (0.74%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.73%) MLflow
10 36 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
11 34 (0.65%) JMeter
11 34 (0.65%) REST Assured
12 31 (0.59%) Cypress.io
13 30 (0.57%) Maven
14 29 (0.55%) Artifactory
15 26 (0.50%) Bitbucket
15 26 (0.50%) CircleCI
15 26 (0.50%) Gradle
16 24 (0.46%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,677 (32.03%) Social Skills
2 944 (18.03%) Finance
3 571 (10.91%) Public Sector
4 524 (10.01%) Analytical Skills
5 326 (6.23%) Banking
6 177 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
7 106 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 99 (1.89%) Legal
9 82 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
10 81 (1.55%) Retail
11 79 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
11 79 (1.51%) Marketing
12 68 (1.30%) Investment Banking
13 55 (1.05%) Telecoms
14 53 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
15 51 (0.97%) Financial Institution
15 51 (0.97%) Law
16 45 (0.86%) Manufacturing
17 39 (0.74%) Local Government
18 36 (0.69%) Military
Job Titles
1 842 (16.08%) Architect
2 757 (14.46%) Developer
3 545 (10.41%) Senior
4 407 (7.77%) Azure Engineer
5 394 (7.53%) Data Engineer
6 365 (6.97%) Lead
7 361 (6.90%) Analyst
8 272 (5.20%) DevOps Engineer
9 265 (5.06%) Solutions Architect
10 211 (4.03%) Consultant
11 164 (3.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 148 (2.83%) Security Engineer
13 137 (2.62%) Senior Developer
14 134 (2.56%) Cloud Engineer
15 127 (2.43%) Azure Architect
16 117 (2.23%) Platform Engineer
17 113 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 106 (2.02%) Azure Data Engineer
19 103 (1.97%) Support Engineer
20 101 (1.93%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 413 (7.89%) .NET
2 367 (7.01%) REST
3 234 (4.47%) React
4 199 (3.80%) RESTful
5 195 (3.72%) Kafka
6 190 (3.63%) PySpark
7 174 (3.32%) Node.js
8 169 (3.23%) OAuth
9 152 (2.90%) Spring
10 145 (2.77%) LDAP
11 140 (2.67%) HTML
12 139 (2.66%) Spring Boot
13 138 (2.64%) AngularJS
14 125 (2.39%) SOAP
15 119 (2.27%) PyTorch
16 118 (2.25%) CSS
17 117 (2.23%) JSON
18 111 (2.12%) TensorFlow
19 109 (2.08%) SAML
20 108 (2.06%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 462 (8.83%) Cloud Native
2 204 (3.90%) Onboarding
3 174 (3.32%) Product Ownership
4 151 (2.88%) Enterprise Software
5 148 (2.83%) Hybrid Cloud
6 147 (2.81%) Security Posture
7 140 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
8 108 (2.06%) Data Centre
9 101 (1.93%) Public Cloud
10 83 (1.59%) Replication
11 78 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
12 70 (1.34%) AI Agents
13 69 (1.32%) Management Information System
14 64 (1.22%) Data Structures
15 57 (1.09%) Low-Code
16 56 (1.07%) Algorithms
17 49 (0.94%) Data Protection Act
18 48 (0.92%) CMDB
18 48 (0.92%) NHS
19 46 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 619 (11.82%) Windows
2 321 (6.13%) Linux
3 188 (3.59%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.27%) Windows 10
5 71 (1.36%) Unix
6 55 (1.05%) VMS
7 47 (0.90%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 39 (0.74%) Android
10 28 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.38%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
14 11 (0.21%) CentOS
15 9 (0.17%) Solaris
16 8 (0.15%) Amazon Linux
16 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
17 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
18 5 (0.096%) AIX
19 3 (0.057%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,919 (36.66%) DevOps
2 1,530 (29.23%) CI/CD
3 1,288 (24.60%) Agile
4 1,017 (19.43%) Problem-Solving
5 784 (14.98%) Analytics
6 692 (13.22%) AI
7 671 (12.82%) Infrastructure as Code
8 616 (11.77%) Migration
9 577 (11.02%) Business Intelligence
10 544 (10.39%) Stakeholder Management
11 512 (9.78%) Data Modelling
12 511 (9.76%) Containerisation
13 469 (8.96%) Continuous Improvement
14 466 (8.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 444 (8.48%) Machine Learning
16 432 (8.25%) ETL
17 431 (8.23%) Data Pipeline
17 431 (8.23%) Microservices
18 421 (8.04%) Test Automation
19 393 (7.51%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,324 (25.29%) Python
2 1,146 (21.89%) SQL
3 590 (11.27%) PowerShell
4 456 (8.71%) Java
5 435 (8.31%) C#
6 399 (7.62%) JavaScript
7 228 (4.36%) Bash
8 215 (4.11%) TypeScript
9 147 (2.81%) Bicep
10 93 (1.78%) Scala
11 79 (1.51%) Go
12 73 (1.39%) PL/SQL
13 63 (1.20%) Kusto Query Language
14 55 (1.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 55 (1.05%) T-SQL
15 47 (0.90%) R
16 33 (0.63%) C++
17 31 (0.59%) Shell Script
18 25 (0.48%) PHP
19 22 (0.42%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,279 (24.43%) Security Cleared
2 1,055 (20.15%) SC Cleared
3 436 (8.33%) Degree
4 314 (6.00%) Azure Certification
5 179 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 152 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
7 142 (2.71%) CISSP
8 113 (2.16%) DV Cleared
9 111 (2.12%) AWS Certification
10 91 (1.74%) CISM
11 80 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
12 73 (1.39%) Master's Degree
13 68 (1.30%) BPSS Clearance
14 43 (0.82%) PMI Certification
15 38 (0.73%) PMP
16 37 (0.71%) ISTQB
16 37 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
17 36 (0.69%) MCP
18 35 (0.67%) CCNP
19 26 (0.50%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 336 (6.42%) GDPR
2 314 (6.00%) Data Quality
3 271 (5.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 269 (5.14%) QA
5 206 (3.94%) NIST
6 99 (1.89%) Accessibility
7 80 (1.53%) NCSC
8 68 (1.30%) PCI DSS
9 48 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
9 48 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 42 (0.80%) SLA
11 36 (0.69%) HIPAA
12 34 (0.65%) SOC 2
13 30 (0.57%) PMO
13 30 (0.57%) WCAG
14 28 (0.53%) EU AI Act
15 27 (0.52%) PSD2
16 25 (0.48%) GRC
17 23 (0.44%) ISO 20022
18 18 (0.34%) SEPA
System Software
1 740 (14.14%) Active Directory
2 646 (12.34%) Docker
3 175 (3.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 81 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 68 (1.30%) Virtual Desktop
5 68 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
6 56 (1.07%) vSphere
7 20 (0.38%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.25%) Squid
9 11 (0.21%) DFS Replication
9 11 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.19%) KVM
11 9 (0.17%) Postfix
12 8 (0.15%) Dovecot
13 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.13%) Firmware
13 7 (0.13%) NFS
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.11%) Snort
Systems Management
1 770 (14.71%) Terraform
2 757 (14.46%) Kubernetes
3 300 (5.73%) Microsoft Intune
4 246 (4.70%) Ansible
5 136 (2.60%) Single Sign-On
6 133 (2.54%) SCCM
7 125 (2.39%) Grafana
8 116 (2.22%) Prometheus
9 66 (1.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.73%) Argo
11 33 (0.63%) Puppet
12 23 (0.44%) 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 (0.32%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.32%) vRealize
17 16 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,741 (33.26%) Microsoft
2 519 (9.91%) Databricks
3 321 (6.13%) Oracle
4 292 (5.58%) Google
5 242 (4.62%) ServiceNow
6 226 (4.32%) VMware
7 147 (2.81%) SAP
8 139 (2.66%) Cisco
9 137 (2.62%) Splunk
10 132 (2.52%) OpenAI
11 113 (2.16%) Salesforce
12 109 (2.08%) CyberArk
13 84 (1.60%) Palo Alto
14 69 (1.32%) Okta
15 66 (1.26%) Foundry
16 63 (1.20%) BeyondTrust
16 63 (1.20%) Citrix
17 60 (1.15%) Red Hat
18 52 (0.99%) IBM
19 49 (0.94%) Fortinet