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

 6 months to
17 Jan 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,080 4,128 5,203
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.90% 15.34% 14.16%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.85% 41.66% 41.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,609 2,773 3,885
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £416 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.24% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 30 69
10th Percentile £16.25 £19.97 £17.75
25th Percentile £26.86 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £55.00 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +57.14% -24.21% -9.45%
75th Percentile £72.13 £60.56 £58.00
90th Percentile £93.75 £75.67 £72.60
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £28.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +87.50% -39.37% -1.74%

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 12,140 9,908 12,438
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.99% 36.81% 33.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,418 6,602 9,078
10th Percentile £300 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £420 £419
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 £736
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 140 257
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.70 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £30.00 £28.21 £23.22
Median % change year-on-year +6.36% +21.49% +1.75%
75th Percentile £57.06 £46.51 £51.58
90th Percentile £77.19 £68.75 £73.00
UK median hourly rate £29.11 £27.50 £24.02
% change year-on-year +5.85% +14.49% +6.76%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 2,748 £539 -2.05% 888
North of England -2 661 £463 +2.32% 658
South East -3 625 £492 -6.29% 1,020
Midlands -1 437 £525 +3.70% 385
West Midlands +2 331 £550 - 174
North West 0 322 £450 - 337
South West +3 306 £517 -1.48% 351
Yorkshire -1 299 £479 +0.74% 224
East of England -2 132 £500 +15.94% 362
East Midlands -4 105 £437 -3.00% 204
North East -5 44 £475 -2.56% 105
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
1 255 (5.02%) SharePoint
2 171 (3.37%) Microsoft Exchange
3 122 (2.40%) Apache Spark
4 119 (2.34%) Confluence
5 75 (1.48%) Apache
6 68 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.45%) OpenStack
8 22 (0.43%) SAS
9 20 (0.39%) CMS
10 19 (0.37%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.30%) HCL Notes
12 13 (0.26%) nginx
13 11 (0.22%) Appian
13 11 (0.22%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.22%) IIS
13 11 (0.22%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.20%) Mendix
15 9 (0.18%) Camunda
15 9 (0.18%) GeoServer
16 8 (0.16%) Smallworld
Applications
1 116 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 86 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 44 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 42 (0.83%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.16%) Trello
9 5 (0.098%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.098%) Weka
10 3 (0.059%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.039%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.039%) 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 92 (1.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (1.16%) 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 (0.098%) Cloudability
9 5 (0.098%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.098%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.098%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.079%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,828 (35.98%) AWS
2 1,061 (20.89%) GCP
3 1,000 (19.69%) Azure DevOps
4 689 (13.56%) Power Platform
5 613 (12.07%) Microsoft 365
6 601 (11.83%) Entra ID
7 516 (10.16%) GitHub
8 347 (6.83%) Azure Data Factory
9 301 (5.93%) Serverless
10 297 (5.85%) GitHub Actions
11 243 (4.78%) Dynamics 365
12 219 (4.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 218 (4.29%) SaaS
14 212 (4.17%) Power Automate
15 201 (3.96%) Azure AKS
16 196 (3.86%) Azure Monitor
17 192 (3.78%) Azure Logic Apps
18 188 (3.70%) Azure Functions
19 180 (3.54%) PowerApps
20 176 (3.46%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 355 (6.99%) Firewall
2 218 (4.29%) DNS
3 172 (3.39%) VPN
4 155 (3.05%) Network Security
5 125 (2.46%) DHCP
6 123 (2.42%) WAN
7 95 (1.87%) TCP/IP
8 82 (1.61%) LAN
9 65 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.20%) SD-WAN
10 61 (1.20%) VLAN
11 44 (0.87%) HTTP
12 34 (0.67%) Kerberos
13 32 (0.63%) BGP
14 30 (0.59%) Wireless
15 29 (0.57%) Internet
16 24 (0.47%) MPLS
16 24 (0.47%) SAN
17 22 (0.43%) SSL
18 21 (0.41%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 493 (9.70%) Power BI
2 290 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 237 (4.67%) Data Lake
4 232 (4.57%) Data Warehouse
5 186 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
6 168 (3.31%) Azure SQL Database
7 157 (3.09%) NoSQL
8 109 (2.15%) Metadata
9 107 (2.11%) Relational Database
10 80 (1.57%) Delta Lake
11 79 (1.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 77 (1.52%) MongoDB
13 60 (1.18%) Oracle Database
14 57 (1.12%) Big Data
15 56 (1.10%) MySQL
15 56 (1.10%) Tableau
16 48 (0.94%) BigQuery
17 44 (0.87%) Redis
18 40 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
18 40 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 388 (7.64%) Git
2 351 (6.91%) JIRA
3 276 (5.43%) Jenkins
4 204 (4.02%) GitLab
5 80 (1.57%) Selenium
6 73 (1.44%) Postman
7 54 (1.06%) SonarQube
8 47 (0.93%) JUnit
9 41 (0.81%) Cucumber
10 37 (0.73%) MLflow
11 36 (0.71%) Oracle APEX
12 33 (0.65%) CircleCI
13 32 (0.63%) Maven
14 31 (0.61%) Cypress.io
14 31 (0.61%) REST Assured
15 30 (0.59%) JMeter
16 28 (0.55%) Bitbucket
17 27 (0.53%) Gradle
18 26 (0.51%) Artifactory
19 23 (0.45%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,630 (32.09%) Social Skills
2 926 (18.23%) Finance
3 563 (11.08%) Public Sector
4 492 (9.69%) Analytical Skills
5 320 (6.30%) Banking
6 167 (3.29%) Documentation Skills
7 107 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 89 (1.75%) Legal
9 82 (1.61%) Retail
10 78 (1.54%) Marketing
10 78 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
11 76 (1.50%) Influencing Skills
12 70 (1.38%) Investment Banking
13 53 (1.04%) Telecoms
14 52 (1.02%) Financial Institution
14 52 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
15 50 (0.98%) Law
16 49 (0.96%) Manufacturing
17 41 (0.81%) Military
18 40 (0.79%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 814 (16.02%) Architect
2 728 (14.33%) Developer
3 544 (10.71%) Senior
4 388 (7.64%) Data Engineer
5 386 (7.60%) Azure Engineer
6 368 (7.24%) Lead
7 348 (6.85%) Analyst
8 268 (5.28%) DevOps Engineer
9 252 (4.96%) Solutions Architect
10 197 (3.88%) Consultant
11 155 (3.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 147 (2.89%) Security Engineer
13 134 (2.64%) Senior Developer
14 127 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
15 122 (2.40%) Platform Engineer
16 121 (2.38%) Azure Architect
17 105 (2.07%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 105 (2.07%) Azure Data Engineer
18 98 (1.93%) Support Engineer
19 95 (1.87%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 411 (8.09%) .NET
2 347 (6.83%) REST
3 218 (4.29%) React
4 193 (3.80%) Kafka
5 190 (3.74%) RESTful
6 187 (3.68%) PySpark
7 173 (3.41%) Node.js
8 154 (3.03%) OAuth
9 153 (3.01%) Spring
10 135 (2.66%) HTML
11 129 (2.54%) AngularJS
11 129 (2.54%) Spring Boot
12 122 (2.40%) SOAP
13 119 (2.34%) JSON
14 117 (2.30%) LDAP
15 115 (2.26%) PyTorch
16 112 (2.20%) CSS
17 107 (2.11%) TensorFlow
18 103 (2.03%) Middleware
19 95 (1.87%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 460 (9.06%) Cloud Native
2 194 (3.82%) Onboarding
3 164 (3.23%) Product Ownership
4 155 (3.05%) Enterprise Software
5 152 (2.99%) Hybrid Cloud
6 144 (2.83%) Security Posture
7 133 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
8 112 (2.20%) Data Centre
9 98 (1.93%) Public Cloud
10 86 (1.69%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.34%) Management Information System
12 65 (1.28%) AI Agents
13 64 (1.26%) Replication
14 61 (1.20%) Data Structures
15 59 (1.16%) Algorithms
16 57 (1.12%) Low-Code
17 51 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
18 47 (0.93%) CMDB
19 46 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
20 45 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 602 (11.85%) Windows
2 325 (6.40%) Linux
3 182 (3.58%) Windows Server
4 114 (2.24%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.56%) Unix
6 55 (1.08%) VMS
7 45 (0.89%) Apple iOS
8 41 (0.81%) Android
9 40 (0.79%) Mac OS
10 28 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.39%) Ubuntu
13 15 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.20%) CentOS
15 9 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.18%) Solaris
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.098%) AIX
17 5 (0.098%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.079%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,854 (36.50%) DevOps
2 1,491 (29.35%) CI/CD
3 1,241 (24.43%) Agile
4 982 (19.33%) Problem-Solving
5 764 (15.04%) Analytics
6 663 (13.05%) Infrastructure as Code
7 648 (12.76%) AI
8 585 (11.52%) Migration
9 566 (11.14%) Business Intelligence
10 520 (10.24%) Stakeholder Management
11 502 (9.88%) Containerisation
12 485 (9.55%) Data Modelling
13 455 (8.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 447 (8.80%) Continuous Improvement
15 426 (8.39%) Machine Learning
16 421 (8.29%) Microservices
17 417 (8.21%) ETL
18 415 (8.17%) Data Pipeline
19 413 (8.13%) Test Automation
20 378 (7.44%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,303 (25.65%) Python
2 1,117 (21.99%) SQL
3 546 (10.75%) PowerShell
4 461 (9.07%) Java
5 423 (8.33%) C#
6 387 (7.62%) JavaScript
7 231 (4.55%) Bash
8 197 (3.88%) TypeScript
9 150 (2.95%) Bicep
10 81 (1.59%) Scala
11 80 (1.57%) Go
12 72 (1.42%) PL/SQL
13 64 (1.26%) Kusto Query Language
14 51 (1.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 51 (1.00%) T-SQL
15 50 (0.98%) R
16 32 (0.63%) C++
17 31 (0.61%) Shell Script
18 26 (0.51%) PHP
19 22 (0.43%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,242 (24.45%) Security Cleared
2 1,025 (20.18%) SC Cleared
3 427 (8.41%) Degree
4 304 (5.98%) Azure Certification
5 172 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 144 (2.83%) CISSP
6 144 (2.83%) Microsoft Certification
7 116 (2.28%) DV Cleared
8 108 (2.13%) AWS Certification
9 90 (1.77%) CISM
10 82 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
11 72 (1.42%) Master's Degree
12 55 (1.08%) BPSS Clearance
13 40 (0.79%) MCP
13 40 (0.79%) PMI Certification
14 36 (0.71%) CCNP
14 36 (0.71%) PMP
15 35 (0.69%) ISTQB
15 35 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
16 29 (0.57%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 326 (6.42%) GDPR
2 302 (5.94%) Data Quality
3 276 (5.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 267 (5.26%) QA
5 211 (4.15%) NIST
6 94 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 76 (1.50%) NCSC
8 74 (1.46%) PCI DSS
9 48 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
10 40 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 37 (0.73%) SLA
12 35 (0.69%) SOC 2
13 34 (0.67%) HIPAA
14 30 (0.59%) PSD2
15 28 (0.55%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.55%) WCAG
16 27 (0.53%) PMO
17 23 (0.45%) GRC
18 22 (0.43%) ISO 20022
19 16 (0.31%) SEPA
System Software
1 687 (13.52%) Active Directory
2 653 (12.85%) Docker
3 167 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 77 (1.52%) Hyper-V
5 63 (1.24%) Virtual Machines
6 62 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 52 (1.02%) vSphere
8 20 (0.39%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.28%) Squid
10 12 (0.24%) DFS Replication
11 11 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
12 10 (0.20%) KVM
12 10 (0.20%) Postfix
13 9 (0.18%) Dovecot
14 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 7 (0.14%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 7 (0.14%) NFS
15 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.14%) Snort
15 7 (0.14%) zsh
Systems Management
1 755 (14.86%) Kubernetes
1 755 (14.86%) Terraform
2 285 (5.61%) Microsoft Intune
3 241 (4.74%) Ansible
4 128 (2.52%) Grafana
5 126 (2.48%) SCCM
6 122 (2.40%) Prometheus
7 118 (2.32%) Single Sign-On
8 42 (0.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 37 (0.73%) Argo
10 34 (0.67%) Puppet
11 22 (0.43%) Nessus
12 21 (0.41%) Progress Chef
13 19 (0.37%) FortiGate
13 19 (0.37%) Istio
13 19 (0.37%) Kibana
14 18 (0.35%) Nmap
14 18 (0.35%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.33%) vRealize
16 15 (0.30%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,658 (32.64%) Microsoft
2 507 (9.98%) Databricks
3 320 (6.30%) Oracle
4 282 (5.55%) Google
5 238 (4.69%) ServiceNow
6 215 (4.23%) VMware
7 153 (3.01%) Cisco
8 146 (2.87%) Splunk
9 142 (2.80%) SAP
10 123 (2.42%) OpenAI
11 106 (2.09%) Salesforce
12 104 (2.05%) CyberArk
13 85 (1.67%) Palo Alto
14 65 (1.28%) Citrix
15 61 (1.20%) Red Hat
16 60 (1.18%) Foundry
17 59 (1.16%) BeyondTrust
18 58 (1.14%) Okta
19 55 (1.08%) IBM
20 52 (1.02%) Dynatrace
3,350 Azure jobs in England