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

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,026 4,107 5,165
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.88% 15.33% 14.32%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.77% 41.65% 42.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,563 2,765 3,858
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% -3.51%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -0.95% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 30 60
10th Percentile £16.10 £19.97 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.74 £23.80 £22.58
Median hourly rate £54.00 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +54.29% -24.21% -9.45%
75th Percentile £72.13 £60.56 £54.06
90th Percentile £94.00 £75.67 £75.25
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £28.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +78.57% -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 12,032 9,860 12,288
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 38.02% 36.81% 34.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,329 6,568 8,971
10th Percentile £304 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £421 £422
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 £735
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 273 135 236
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.46 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.36 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.71 £28.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.77% +26.67% -0.32%
75th Percentile £57.25 £46.84 £50.40
90th Percentile £78.45 £68.75 £74.38
UK median hourly rate £27.61 £27.50 £23.00
% change year-on-year +0.38% +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 14 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 14 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 14 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 2,705 £545 -0.91% 885
North of England -1 646 £465 +2.88% 661
South East -2 629 £492 -6.29% 994
Midlands 0 434 £525 +5.00% 377
West Midlands +2 330 £550 - 178
North West 0 314 £450 - 333
South West +5 308 £523 -0.38% 330
Yorkshire -1 294 £475 - 223
East of England -4 131 £500 +15.94% 365
East Midlands -2 103 £436 -3.11% 192
North East -8 42 £488 +1.30% 112
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
1 254 (5.05%) SharePoint
2 169 (3.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 122 (2.43%) Apache Spark
4 116 (2.31%) Confluence
5 74 (1.47%) 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
1 116 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 85 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 44 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 39 (0.78%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.70%) 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 2 (0.040%) Windchill
11 1 (0.020%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.020%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.020%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.020%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.020%) PTC Creo
11 1 (0.020%) Revit
11 1 (0.020%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.020%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.020%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 91 (1.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (1.11%) 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
7 7 (0.14%) NetSuite
7 7 (0.14%) Teamcenter
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 (0.080%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,814 (36.09%) AWS
2 1,046 (20.81%) GCP
3 986 (19.62%) Azure DevOps
4 680 (13.53%) Power Platform
5 600 (11.94%) Microsoft 365
6 589 (11.72%) Entra ID
7 512 (10.19%) GitHub
8 343 (6.82%) Azure Data Factory
9 298 (5.93%) GitHub Actions
10 291 (5.79%) Serverless
11 241 (4.80%) Dynamics 365
12 217 (4.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 214 (4.26%) SaaS
14 209 (4.16%) Power Automate
15 202 (4.02%) Azure AKS
16 198 (3.94%) Azure Monitor
17 189 (3.76%) Azure Logic Apps
18 186 (3.70%) Azure Functions
19 180 (3.58%) PowerApps
20 175 (3.48%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 357 (7.10%) Firewall
2 209 (4.16%) DNS
3 165 (3.28%) VPN
4 152 (3.02%) Network Security
5 121 (2.41%) WAN
6 116 (2.31%) DHCP
7 95 (1.89%) TCP/IP
8 80 (1.59%) LAN
9 63 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 60 (1.19%) VLAN
12 44 (0.88%) HTTP
13 32 (0.64%) BGP
14 30 (0.60%) Wireless
15 29 (0.58%) Internet
15 29 (0.58%) Kerberos
16 25 (0.50%) MPLS
17 24 (0.48%) SAN
18 22 (0.44%) SSL
19 21 (0.42%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 490 (9.75%) Power BI
2 279 (5.55%) SQL Server
3 241 (4.80%) Data Lake
4 231 (4.60%) Data Warehouse
5 189 (3.76%) PostgreSQL
6 169 (3.36%) Azure SQL Database
7 158 (3.14%) NoSQL
8 107 (2.13%) Relational Database
9 105 (2.09%) Metadata
10 78 (1.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 77 (1.53%) MongoDB
12 75 (1.49%) Delta Lake
13 62 (1.23%) Oracle Database
14 58 (1.15%) Big Data
15 57 (1.13%) Tableau
16 55 (1.09%) MySQL
17 50 (0.99%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.92%) Redis
19 40 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
20 39 (0.78%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 387 (7.70%) Git
2 342 (6.80%) JIRA
3 267 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 195 (3.88%) GitLab
5 77 (1.53%) Selenium
6 71 (1.41%) Postman
7 55 (1.09%) SonarQube
8 47 (0.94%) JUnit
9 40 (0.80%) Cucumber
10 37 (0.74%) Oracle APEX
11 36 (0.72%) MLflow
12 33 (0.66%) CircleCI
12 33 (0.66%) Maven
13 30 (0.60%) Cypress.io
13 30 (0.60%) REST Assured
14 28 (0.56%) Bitbucket
14 28 (0.56%) JMeter
15 27 (0.54%) Gradle
16 25 (0.50%) Artifactory
17 22 (0.44%) ERwin
General
1 1,608 (31.99%) Social Skills
2 919 (18.28%) Finance
3 556 (11.06%) Public Sector
4 482 (9.59%) Analytical Skills
5 320 (6.37%) Banking
6 165 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
7 106 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 85 (1.69%) Legal
9 77 (1.53%) Retail
10 76 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
10 76 (1.51%) Marketing
11 75 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
12 74 (1.47%) Investment Banking
13 54 (1.07%) Telecoms
14 50 (0.99%) Financial Institution
14 50 (0.99%) Law
15 49 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
16 48 (0.96%) Manufacturing
17 40 (0.80%) Military
18 39 (0.78%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 800 (15.92%) Architect
2 719 (14.31%) Developer
3 537 (10.68%) Senior
4 388 (7.72%) Azure Engineer
5 377 (7.50%) Data Engineer
6 363 (7.22%) Lead
7 349 (6.94%) Analyst
8 268 (5.33%) DevOps Engineer
9 250 (4.97%) Solutions Architect
10 194 (3.86%) Consultant
11 157 (3.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 148 (2.94%) Security Engineer
13 135 (2.69%) Senior Developer
14 127 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
15 121 (2.41%) Platform Engineer
16 120 (2.39%) Azure Architect
17 106 (2.11%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 105 (2.09%) Azure Data Engineer
19 100 (1.99%) Software Engineer
20 97 (1.93%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 404 (8.04%) .NET
2 340 (6.76%) REST
3 218 (4.34%) React
4 191 (3.80%) Kafka
5 188 (3.74%) RESTful
6 183 (3.64%) PySpark
7 170 (3.38%) Node.js
8 150 (2.98%) OAuth
9 147 (2.92%) Spring
10 135 (2.69%) HTML
11 128 (2.55%) AngularJS
12 123 (2.45%) JSON
13 121 (2.41%) SOAP
13 121 (2.41%) Spring Boot
14 115 (2.29%) PyTorch
15 111 (2.21%) CSS
16 109 (2.17%) LDAP
17 107 (2.13%) TensorFlow
18 103 (2.05%) Middleware
19 94 (1.87%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 446 (8.87%) Cloud Native
2 186 (3.70%) Onboarding
3 162 (3.22%) Product Ownership
4 155 (3.08%) Enterprise Software
5 147 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
6 145 (2.88%) Security Posture
7 134 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
8 113 (2.25%) Data Centre
9 95 (1.89%) Public Cloud
10 87 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
11 66 (1.31%) Management Information System
12 63 (1.25%) AI Agents
12 63 (1.25%) Algorithms
13 59 (1.17%) Data Structures
13 59 (1.17%) Replication
14 54 (1.07%) Low-Code
15 50 (0.99%) Data Protection Act
16 47 (0.94%) CMDB
16 47 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
17 44 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 583 (11.60%) Windows
2 327 (6.51%) Linux
3 172 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 111 (2.21%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.57%) Unix
6 56 (1.11%) VMS
7 44 (0.88%) Apple iOS
8 40 (0.80%) Android
9 38 (0.76%) Mac OS
10 27 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 20 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 12 (0.24%) 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 (0.080%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,833 (36.47%) DevOps
2 1,462 (29.09%) CI/CD
3 1,229 (24.45%) Agile
4 959 (19.08%) Problem-Solving
5 745 (14.82%) Analytics
6 651 (12.95%) Infrastructure as Code
7 632 (12.57%) AI
8 580 (11.54%) Migration
9 562 (11.18%) Business Intelligence
10 511 (10.17%) Stakeholder Management
11 492 (9.79%) Containerisation
12 476 (9.47%) Data Modelling
13 453 (9.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 437 (8.69%) Continuous Improvement
15 424 (8.44%) Machine Learning
16 418 (8.32%) Microservices
17 406 (8.08%) ETL
18 402 (8.00%) Test Automation
19 401 (7.98%) Data Pipeline
20 366 (7.28%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,283 (25.53%) Python
2 1,105 (21.99%) SQL
3 542 (10.78%) PowerShell
4 452 (8.99%) Java
5 422 (8.40%) C#
6 382 (7.60%) JavaScript
7 234 (4.66%) Bash
8 193 (3.84%) TypeScript
9 151 (3.00%) Bicep
10 83 (1.65%) Go
11 80 (1.59%) Scala
12 75 (1.49%) PL/SQL
13 65 (1.29%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (1.03%) T-SQL
15 51 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 49 (0.97%) R
17 31 (0.62%) C++
18 29 (0.58%) Shell Script
19 27 (0.54%) PHP
20 23 (0.46%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,222 (24.31%) Security Cleared
2 1,008 (20.06%) SC Cleared
3 419 (8.34%) Degree
4 305 (6.07%) Azure Certification
5 167 (3.32%) Computer Science Degree
6 145 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
7 144 (2.87%) CISSP
8 116 (2.31%) DV Cleared
9 109 (2.17%) AWS Certification
10 91 (1.81%) CISM
11 84 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
12 73 (1.45%) Master's Degree
13 48 (0.96%) BPSS Clearance
14 40 (0.80%) MCP
14 40 (0.80%) PMI Certification
15 36 (0.72%) CCNP
15 36 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
16 35 (0.70%) ISTQB
16 35 (0.70%) PMP
17 30 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 320 (6.37%) GDPR
2 289 (5.75%) Data Quality
3 277 (5.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 262 (5.21%) QA
5 211 (4.20%) NIST
6 91 (1.81%) Accessibility
7 72 (1.43%) NCSC
7 72 (1.43%) PCI DSS
8 48 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
9 37 (0.74%) SLA
10 35 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 35 (0.70%) SOC 2
11 33 (0.66%) HIPAA
12 29 (0.58%) PMO
13 28 (0.56%) EU AI Act
13 28 (0.56%) PSD2
14 27 (0.54%) WCAG
15 23 (0.46%) GRC
16 20 (0.40%) ISO 20022
17 16 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 669 (13.31%) Active Directory
2 650 (12.93%) Docker
3 163 (3.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 76 (1.51%) Hyper-V
5 62 (1.23%) Virtual Machines
6 61 (1.21%) Virtual Desktop
7 50 (0.99%) 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
13 8 (0.16%) zsh
14 7 (0.14%) Snort
15 6 (0.12%) Firmware
15 6 (0.12%) NFS
Systems Management
1 746 (14.84%) Kubernetes
1 746 (14.84%) Terraform
2 277 (5.51%) Microsoft Intune
3 238 (4.74%) Ansible
4 127 (2.53%) Grafana
5 126 (2.51%) SCCM
6 121 (2.41%) Prometheus
7 111 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
8 37 (0.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 36 (0.72%) Argo
10 32 (0.64%) Puppet
11 22 (0.44%) Nessus
12 20 (0.40%) Kibana
13 19 (0.38%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.36%) Nmap
14 18 (0.36%) Progress Chef
14 18 (0.36%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.34%) Istio
15 17 (0.34%) vRealize
16 16 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,636 (32.55%) Microsoft
2 498 (9.91%) Databricks
3 316 (6.29%) Oracle
4 273 (5.43%) Google
5 239 (4.76%) ServiceNow
6 211 (4.20%) VMware
7 154 (3.06%) Cisco
8 148 (2.94%) Splunk
9 140 (2.79%) SAP
10 121 (2.41%) OpenAI
11 106 (2.11%) Salesforce
12 103 (2.05%) CyberArk
13 86 (1.71%) Palo Alto
14 66 (1.31%) Citrix
15 60 (1.19%) Red Hat
16 59 (1.17%) BeyondTrust
17 58 (1.15%) Foundry
18 55 (1.09%) IBM
19 53 (1.05%) Dynatrace
19 53 (1.05%) Okta