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

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 4,930 4,123 5,229
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.84% 15.30% 14.36%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.62% 41.69% 42.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,493 2,773 3,915
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £420 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -3.46%
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 58 30 63
10th Percentile £16.03 £19.97 £17.75
25th Percentile £25.60 £23.80 £20.62
Median hourly rate £53.25 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +52.14% -24.21% -8.55%
75th Percentile £73.20 £60.56 £52.67
90th Percentile £94.13 £77.75 £74.40
UK median hourly rate £48.00 £28.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +68.42% -38.28% +4.21%

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 11,846 9,889 12,408
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 38.06% 36.71% 34.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,191 6,593 9,074
10th Percentile £304 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £425 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £645 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 273 132 239
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.31 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £27.50 £28.46 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.36% +26.47% -
75th Percentile £56.50 £46.18 £50.00
90th Percentile £78.45 £65.00 £75.50
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £27.50 £22.75
% change year-on-year - +20.88% +1.11%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 2,657 £545 -0.91% 872
North of England -1 634 £465 -2.11% 795
South East -2 611 £492 -7.82% 1,192
Midlands 0 428 £525 +5.00% 509
West Midlands +2 322 £550 +1.63% 215
North West -1 309 £450 - 365
South West +4 305 £525 +0.96% 463
Yorkshire -1 288 £475 -2.06% 303
East of England -3 130 £500 +15.94% 510
East Midlands -1 105 £437 -2.89% 286
North East -6 41 £500 +2.56% 136
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
1 252 (5.11%) SharePoint
2 167 (3.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 117 (2.37%) Apache Spark
4 116 (2.35%) Confluence
5 68 (1.38%) Apache
6 67 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.47%) OpenStack
8 22 (0.45%) SAS
9 19 (0.39%) CMS
10 16 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.28%) 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 9 (0.18%) Camunda
14 9 (0.18%) GeoServer
14 9 (0.18%) Mendix
15 8 (0.16%) Smallworld
Applications
1 115 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.68%) Microsoft Office
3 43 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (0.77%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.16%) Trello
9 5 (0.10%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.10%) Weka
10 2 (0.041%) 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%) Revit
11 1 (0.020%) Siemens NX
11 1 (0.020%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.020%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 90 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 55 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
4 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 9 (0.18%) Maximo
4 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
5 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.14%) Endur
6 7 (0.14%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.12%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.12%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.12%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.10%) Cloudability
8 5 (0.10%) Dynamics NAV
8 5 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.10%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.10%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.081%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,775 (36.00%) AWS
2 1,021 (20.71%) GCP
3 970 (19.68%) Azure DevOps
4 672 (13.63%) Power Platform
5 591 (11.99%) Microsoft 365
6 578 (11.72%) Entra ID
7 503 (10.20%) GitHub
8 335 (6.80%) Azure Data Factory
9 291 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
10 286 (5.80%) Serverless
11 239 (4.85%) Dynamics 365
12 211 (4.28%) Power Automate
12 211 (4.28%) SaaS
13 208 (4.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 199 (4.04%) Azure AKS
15 194 (3.94%) Azure Monitor
16 187 (3.79%) Azure Logic Apps
17 183 (3.71%) Azure Functions
18 181 (3.67%) PowerApps
19 173 (3.51%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 355 (7.20%) Firewall
2 207 (4.20%) DNS
3 163 (3.31%) VPN
4 148 (3.00%) Network Security
5 116 (2.35%) WAN
6 114 (2.31%) DHCP
7 95 (1.93%) TCP/IP
8 80 (1.62%) LAN
9 63 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
10 60 (1.22%) VLAN
11 56 (1.14%) SD-WAN
12 43 (0.87%) HTTP
13 32 (0.65%) BGP
14 30 (0.61%) Wireless
15 28 (0.57%) Internet
15 28 (0.57%) Kerberos
16 25 (0.51%) MPLS
17 24 (0.49%) SAN
18 22 (0.45%) SSL
19 21 (0.43%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 486 (9.86%) Power BI
2 275 (5.58%) SQL Server
3 236 (4.79%) Data Lake
4 227 (4.60%) Data Warehouse
5 187 (3.79%) PostgreSQL
6 167 (3.39%) Azure SQL Database
7 154 (3.12%) NoSQL
8 105 (2.13%) Relational Database
9 104 (2.11%) Metadata
10 78 (1.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 74 (1.50%) MongoDB
12 72 (1.46%) Delta Lake
13 62 (1.26%) Oracle Database
14 56 (1.14%) Big Data
14 56 (1.14%) Tableau
15 55 (1.12%) MySQL
16 48 (0.97%) BigQuery
17 46 (0.93%) Redis
18 41 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
19 39 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 383 (7.77%) Git
2 334 (6.77%) JIRA
3 263 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 189 (3.83%) GitLab
5 74 (1.50%) Selenium
6 66 (1.34%) Postman
7 55 (1.12%) SonarQube
8 47 (0.95%) JUnit
9 38 (0.77%) Cucumber
10 37 (0.75%) Oracle APEX
11 34 (0.69%) MLflow
12 33 (0.67%) CircleCI
12 33 (0.67%) Maven
13 29 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 28 (0.57%) Bitbucket
14 28 (0.57%) REST Assured
15 27 (0.55%) Gradle
16 26 (0.53%) JMeter
17 25 (0.51%) Artifactory
18 22 (0.45%) ERwin
General
1 1,580 (32.05%) Social Skills
2 903 (18.32%) Finance
3 547 (11.10%) Public Sector
4 474 (9.61%) Analytical Skills
5 311 (6.31%) Banking
6 164 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 80 (1.62%) Legal
9 76 (1.54%) Influencing Skills
9 76 (1.54%) Marketing
9 76 (1.54%) Retail
10 75 (1.52%) Presentation Skills
11 72 (1.46%) Investment Banking
12 54 (1.10%) Telecoms
13 50 (1.01%) Financial Institution
13 50 (1.01%) Law
14 49 (0.99%) Manufacturing
15 46 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
16 39 (0.79%) Military
17 37 (0.75%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 784 (15.90%) Architect
2 718 (14.56%) Developer
3 524 (10.63%) Senior
4 383 (7.77%) Azure Engineer
5 361 (7.32%) Data Engineer
5 361 (7.32%) Lead
6 342 (6.94%) Analyst
7 265 (5.38%) DevOps Engineer
8 248 (5.03%) Solutions Architect
9 185 (3.75%) Consultant
10 157 (3.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 145 (2.94%) Security Engineer
12 134 (2.72%) Senior Developer
13 124 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
14 117 (2.37%) Platform Engineer
15 115 (2.33%) Azure Architect
16 104 (2.11%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 104 (2.11%) Azure Data Engineer
17 97 (1.97%) Data Architect
17 97 (1.97%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 404 (8.19%) .NET
2 333 (6.75%) REST
3 214 (4.34%) React
4 188 (3.81%) Kafka
4 188 (3.81%) RESTful
5 175 (3.55%) PySpark
6 166 (3.37%) Node.js
7 147 (2.98%) OAuth
8 146 (2.96%) Spring
9 133 (2.70%) HTML
10 127 (2.58%) AngularJS
11 122 (2.47%) JSON
12 120 (2.43%) SOAP
12 120 (2.43%) Spring Boot
13 112 (2.27%) PyTorch
14 108 (2.19%) CSS
15 105 (2.13%) LDAP
16 104 (2.11%) TensorFlow
17 102 (2.07%) Middleware
18 90 (1.83%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 432 (8.76%) Cloud Native
2 179 (3.63%) Onboarding
3 158 (3.20%) Product Ownership
4 154 (3.12%) Enterprise Software
5 145 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
6 142 (2.88%) Security Posture
7 132 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
8 111 (2.25%) Data Centre
9 91 (1.85%) Public Cloud
10 83 (1.68%) Distributed Systems
11 63 (1.28%) Algorithms
11 63 (1.28%) Management Information System
12 62 (1.26%) AI Agents
13 59 (1.20%) Replication
14 57 (1.16%) Data Structures
15 54 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 49 (0.99%) Data Protection Act
17 48 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
18 46 (0.93%) CMDB
19 44 (0.89%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 569 (11.54%) Windows
2 324 (6.57%) Linux
3 168 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 108 (2.19%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.52%) Unix
6 56 (1.14%) VMS
7 44 (0.89%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.85%) Android
9 37 (0.75%) Mac OS
10 26 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 20 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.39%) Ubuntu
13 12 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.20%) Solaris
15 9 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.18%) CentOS
16 6 (0.12%) AIX
16 6 (0.12%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.081%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,801 (36.53%) DevOps
2 1,422 (28.84%) CI/CD
3 1,210 (24.54%) Agile
4 935 (18.97%) Problem-Solving
5 723 (14.67%) Analytics
6 636 (12.90%) Infrastructure as Code
7 608 (12.33%) AI
8 574 (11.64%) Migration
9 559 (11.34%) Business Intelligence
10 507 (10.28%) Stakeholder Management
11 484 (9.82%) Containerisation
12 469 (9.51%) Data Modelling
13 449 (9.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 421 (8.54%) Continuous Improvement
15 412 (8.36%) Machine Learning
15 412 (8.36%) Microservices
16 393 (7.97%) ETL
17 391 (7.93%) Data Pipeline
18 389 (7.89%) Test Automation
19 358 (7.26%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,250 (25.35%) Python
2 1,081 (21.93%) SQL
3 534 (10.83%) PowerShell
4 442 (8.97%) Java
5 421 (8.54%) C#
6 378 (7.67%) JavaScript
7 234 (4.75%) Bash
8 189 (3.83%) TypeScript
9 144 (2.92%) Bicep
10 78 (1.58%) Go
11 75 (1.52%) PL/SQL
11 75 (1.52%) Scala
12 65 (1.32%) Kusto Query Language
13 51 (1.03%) T-SQL
14 50 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 49 (0.99%) R
16 32 (0.65%) C++
17 28 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.55%) PHP
19 23 (0.47%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,191 (24.16%) Security Cleared
2 987 (20.02%) SC Cleared
3 412 (8.36%) Degree
4 303 (6.15%) Azure Certification
5 161 (3.27%) Computer Science Degree
6 142 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
7 141 (2.86%) CISSP
8 111 (2.25%) DV Cleared
9 109 (2.21%) AWS Certification
10 87 (1.76%) CISM
11 83 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
12 73 (1.48%) Master's Degree
13 47 (0.95%) BPSS Clearance
14 40 (0.81%) MCP
15 39 (0.79%) PMI Certification
16 36 (0.73%) CCNP
17 34 (0.69%) PMP
18 33 (0.67%) ISTQB
18 33 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
19 30 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (6.35%) GDPR
2 277 (5.62%) Data Quality
3 270 (5.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 254 (5.15%) QA
5 209 (4.24%) NIST
6 91 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 72 (1.46%) PCI DSS
8 69 (1.40%) NCSC
9 45 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
10 35 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 35 (0.71%) SLA
11 32 (0.65%) SOC 2
12 31 (0.63%) HIPAA
13 29 (0.59%) PMO
14 28 (0.57%) EU AI Act
14 28 (0.57%) PSD2
15 27 (0.55%) WCAG
16 24 (0.49%) GRC
17 20 (0.41%) ISO 20022
18 15 (0.30%) NIST 800
System Software
1 656 (13.31%) Active Directory
2 638 (12.94%) Docker
3 159 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (1.50%) Hyper-V
5 61 (1.24%) Virtual Desktop
6 60 (1.22%) Virtual Machines
7 50 (1.01%) vSphere
8 19 (0.39%) 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%) Firmware
14 7 (0.14%) Snort
15 6 (0.12%) NFS
Systems Management
1 729 (14.79%) Terraform
2 726 (14.73%) Kubernetes
3 267 (5.42%) Microsoft Intune
4 238 (4.83%) Ansible
5 126 (2.56%) Grafana
6 124 (2.52%) SCCM
7 119 (2.41%) Prometheus
8 111 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (0.73%) Argo
11 31 (0.63%) Puppet
12 22 (0.45%) Nessus
13 20 (0.41%) Kibana
14 18 (0.37%) Nmap
14 18 (0.37%) Progress Chef
14 18 (0.37%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.34%) Istio
15 17 (0.34%) vRealize
16 16 (0.32%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.32%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 1,603 (32.52%) Microsoft
2 479 (9.72%) Databricks
3 312 (6.33%) Oracle
4 268 (5.44%) Google
5 231 (4.69%) ServiceNow
6 207 (4.20%) VMware
7 150 (3.04%) Cisco
8 148 (3.00%) Splunk
9 139 (2.82%) SAP
10 117 (2.37%) OpenAI
11 105 (2.13%) Salesforce
12 100 (2.03%) CyberArk
13 83 (1.68%) Palo Alto
14 64 (1.30%) Citrix
15 61 (1.24%) Red Hat
16 58 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
17 56 (1.14%) Foundry
18 54 (1.10%) IBM
19 52 (1.05%) Okta
20 50 (1.01%) Dynatrace