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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,256 4,107 5,278
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.89% 15.48% 13.89%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.04% 41.72% 41.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,744 2,753 3,942
10th Percentile £350 £352 £350
25th Percentile £419 £425 £448
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 £519 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.13% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 25 79
10th Percentile £18.08 £21.42 £17.75
25th Percentile £29.72 £23.80 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £68.38 £65.00 £59.95
90th Percentile £93.75 £76.51 £66.85
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -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 12,502 9,845 12,664
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.81% 37.11% 33.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,670 6,527 9,244
10th Percentile £304 £313 £273
25th Percentile £406 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £601 £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 311 141 298
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.44 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.25 £17.00
Median hourly rate £33.00 £27.50 £22.75
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% +20.88% -9.00%
75th Percentile £58.75 £46.18 £48.75
90th Percentile £77.25 £68.75 £66.29
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £27.50 £23.22
% change year-on-year +18.18% +18.46% -3.27%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 2,829 £540 -1.82% 979
North of England -1 689 £475 - 590
South East -2 655 £500 -6.98% 883
Midlands -1 446 £515 -2.00% 338
North West -1 346 £450 - 336
West Midlands +2 336 £550 - 175
South West +4 328 £510 -2.86% 276
Yorkshire -1 299 £484 -0.31% 183
East of England 0 143 £525 +10.53% 249
East Midlands -2 109 £433 -3.78% 159
North East -6 47 £500 -1.23% 74
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
1 266 (5.06%) SharePoint
2 178 (3.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 138 (2.63%) Apache Spark
4 126 (2.40%) Confluence
5 76 (1.45%) Apache
6 70 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.49%) 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%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.21%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.21%) IIS
12 11 (0.21%) nginx
12 11 (0.21%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.17%) Mendix
14 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 118 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 92 (1.75%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.89%) MS Visio
4 45 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 36 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.15%) Trello
8 7 (0.13%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.095%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.095%) Weka
10 4 (0.076%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.057%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.038%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.038%) Windchill
13 1 (0.019%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.019%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.019%) FrameMaker
13 1 (0.019%) Revit
Business Applications
1 101 (1.92%) Dynamics CRM
2 58 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
4 10 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.17%) Maximo
5 9 (0.17%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.15%) Endur
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 (0.095%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.095%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.095%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.095%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.095%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,846 (35.12%) AWS
2 1,080 (20.55%) GCP
3 1,045 (19.88%) Azure DevOps
4 717 (13.64%) Power Platform
5 658 (12.52%) Entra ID
6 639 (12.16%) Microsoft 365
7 531 (10.10%) GitHub
8 367 (6.98%) Azure Data Factory
9 310 (5.90%) Serverless
10 293 (5.57%) GitHub Actions
11 251 (4.78%) Dynamics 365
12 228 (4.34%) SaaS
13 227 (4.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 219 (4.17%) Power Automate
15 203 (3.86%) Azure AKS
16 198 (3.77%) Azure Monitor
17 196 (3.73%) Azure Logic Apps
18 194 (3.69%) Azure Functions
19 186 (3.54%) PaaS
20 180 (3.42%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 357 (6.79%) Firewall
2 241 (4.59%) DNS
3 177 (3.37%) VPN
4 149 (2.83%) DHCP
4 149 (2.83%) Network Security
5 124 (2.36%) WAN
6 93 (1.77%) TCP/IP
7 86 (1.64%) LAN
8 68 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
9 62 (1.18%) Kerberos
9 62 (1.18%) VLAN
10 60 (1.14%) SD-WAN
11 42 (0.80%) HTTP
12 34 (0.65%) BGP
13 30 (0.57%) Internet
14 29 (0.55%) Wireless
15 27 (0.51%) MPLS
16 25 (0.48%) SAN
17 23 (0.44%) SSL
18 22 (0.42%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 501 (9.53%) Power BI
2 296 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 249 (4.74%) Data Warehouse
4 240 (4.57%) Data Lake
5 180 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
6 177 (3.37%) Azure SQL Database
7 164 (3.12%) NoSQL
8 115 (2.19%) Metadata
9 112 (2.13%) Relational Database
10 87 (1.66%) Delta Lake
11 84 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 75 (1.43%) MongoDB
13 63 (1.20%) Tableau
14 61 (1.16%) Big Data
15 60 (1.14%) Oracle Database
16 55 (1.05%) MySQL
17 54 (1.03%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.89%) Redis
19 44 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
20 38 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 391 (7.44%) Git
2 363 (6.91%) JIRA
3 266 (5.06%) Jenkins
4 200 (3.81%) GitLab
5 80 (1.52%) Selenium
6 79 (1.50%) Postman
7 55 (1.05%) SonarQube
8 43 (0.82%) JUnit
9 40 (0.76%) Cucumber
10 38 (0.72%) MLflow
11 36 (0.68%) Oracle APEX
12 34 (0.65%) JMeter
12 34 (0.65%) REST Assured
13 31 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.55%) Artifactory
15 28 (0.53%) Maven
16 27 (0.51%) Visual Studio
17 25 (0.48%) Bitbucket
17 25 (0.48%) CircleCI
18 24 (0.46%) Gradle
General
1 1,688 (32.12%) Social Skills
2 946 (18.00%) Finance
3 571 (10.86%) Public Sector
4 531 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
5 327 (6.22%) Banking
6 180 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
7 103 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 101 (1.92%) Legal
9 84 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
10 81 (1.54%) Retail
11 80 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
12 79 (1.50%) Marketing
13 68 (1.29%) Investment Banking
14 55 (1.05%) Organisational Skills
14 55 (1.05%) Telecoms
15 52 (0.99%) Law
16 51 (0.97%) Financial Institution
17 43 (0.82%) Manufacturing
18 37 (0.70%) Local Government
18 37 (0.70%) Military
Job Titles
1 851 (16.19%) Architect
2 752 (14.31%) Developer
3 553 (10.52%) Senior
4 417 (7.93%) Azure Engineer
5 399 (7.59%) Data Engineer
6 366 (6.96%) Lead
7 364 (6.93%) Analyst
8 269 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
9 267 (5.08%) Solutions Architect
10 213 (4.05%) Consultant
11 167 (3.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 144 (2.74%) Security Engineer
13 137 (2.61%) Senior Developer
14 133 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
15 131 (2.49%) Azure Architect
16 120 (2.28%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 118 (2.25%) Platform Engineer
18 105 (2.00%) Azure Data Engineer
18 105 (2.00%) Support Engineer
19 101 (1.92%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 416 (7.91%) .NET
2 375 (7.13%) REST
3 236 (4.49%) React
4 200 (3.81%) Kafka
4 200 (3.81%) RESTful
5 190 (3.61%) PySpark
6 178 (3.39%) Node.js
7 168 (3.20%) OAuth
8 153 (2.91%) Spring
9 146 (2.78%) LDAP
10 140 (2.66%) HTML
11 139 (2.64%) Spring Boot
12 138 (2.63%) AngularJS
13 124 (2.36%) JSON
13 124 (2.36%) SOAP
14 119 (2.26%) CSS
15 118 (2.25%) PyTorch
16 110 (2.09%) TensorFlow
17 109 (2.07%) SAML
18 107 (2.04%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 462 (8.79%) Cloud Native
2 209 (3.98%) Onboarding
3 175 (3.33%) Product Ownership
4 154 (2.93%) Enterprise Software
5 150 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
6 147 (2.80%) Security Posture
7 137 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
8 107 (2.04%) Data Centre
9 102 (1.94%) Public Cloud
10 82 (1.56%) Replication
11 79 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
12 72 (1.37%) AI Agents
13 68 (1.29%) Management Information System
14 64 (1.22%) Data Structures
15 56 (1.07%) Low-Code
16 55 (1.05%) Algorithms
17 49 (0.93%) CMDB
17 49 (0.93%) Data Protection Act
18 48 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
18 48 (0.91%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 629 (11.97%) Windows
2 321 (6.11%) Linux
3 190 (3.61%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.26%) Windows 10
5 70 (1.33%) Unix
6 53 (1.01%) VMS
7 46 (0.88%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 38 (0.72%) Android
10 28 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.36%) Ubuntu
13 18 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
14 11 (0.21%) CentOS
15 9 (0.17%) Solaris
15 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 7 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.095%) AIX
18 3 (0.057%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,929 (36.70%) DevOps
2 1,533 (29.17%) CI/CD
3 1,288 (24.51%) Agile
4 1,020 (19.41%) Problem-Solving
5 797 (15.16%) Analytics
6 706 (13.43%) AI
7 674 (12.82%) Infrastructure as Code
8 616 (11.72%) Migration
9 573 (10.90%) Business Intelligence
10 543 (10.33%) Stakeholder Management
11 517 (9.84%) Data Modelling
12 516 (9.82%) Containerisation
13 472 (8.98%) Continuous Improvement
14 467 (8.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 453 (8.62%) Machine Learning
16 444 (8.45%) ETL
17 439 (8.35%) Microservices
18 434 (8.26%) Data Pipeline
19 420 (7.99%) Test Automation
20 399 (7.59%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,324 (25.19%) Python
2 1,155 (21.97%) SQL
3 598 (11.38%) PowerShell
4 452 (8.60%) Java
5 445 (8.47%) C#
6 396 (7.53%) JavaScript
7 226 (4.30%) Bash
8 215 (4.09%) TypeScript
9 150 (2.85%) Bicep
10 91 (1.73%) Scala
11 78 (1.48%) Go
12 73 (1.39%) PL/SQL
13 63 (1.20%) Kusto Query Language
14 58 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 53 (1.01%) T-SQL
16 46 (0.88%) R
17 33 (0.63%) C++
18 30 (0.57%) Shell Script
19 25 (0.48%) PHP
20 20 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,286 (24.47%) Security Cleared
2 1,060 (20.17%) SC Cleared
3 438 (8.33%) Degree
4 321 (6.11%) Azure Certification
5 180 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 155 (2.95%) Microsoft Certification
7 141 (2.68%) CISSP
8 115 (2.19%) DV Cleared
9 110 (2.09%) AWS Certification
10 90 (1.71%) CISM
11 79 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
12 72 (1.37%) Master's Degree
13 69 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
14 43 (0.82%) PMI Certification
15 38 (0.72%) ISTQB
15 38 (0.72%) PMP
15 38 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
16 36 (0.68%) CCNP
17 29 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 25 (0.48%) CREST Certified
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 338 (6.43%) GDPR
2 319 (6.07%) Data Quality
3 273 (5.19%) QA
4 268 (5.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 206 (3.92%) NIST
6 97 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.54%) NCSC
8 68 (1.29%) PCI DSS
9 48 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 46 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
11 41 (0.78%) SLA
12 36 (0.68%) HIPAA
13 34 (0.65%) SOC 2
14 30 (0.57%) PMO
14 30 (0.57%) WCAG
15 28 (0.53%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.53%) PSD2
16 25 (0.48%) GRC
17 24 (0.46%) ISO 20022
18 19 (0.36%) SEPA
System Software
1 741 (14.10%) Active Directory
2 643 (12.23%) Docker
3 177 (3.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (1.62%) Hyper-V
5 70 (1.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 68 (1.29%) Virtual Machines
7 58 (1.10%) vSphere
8 20 (0.38%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.23%) Squid
9 12 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 10 (0.19%) DFS Replication
10 10 (0.19%) KVM
11 8 (0.15%) Postfix
12 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 7 (0.13%) Dovecot
12 7 (0.13%) Firmware
12 7 (0.13%) NFS
12 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 777 (14.78%) Terraform
2 755 (14.36%) Kubernetes
3 306 (5.82%) Microsoft Intune
4 244 (4.64%) Ansible
5 137 (2.61%) Single Sign-On
6 134 (2.55%) SCCM
7 126 (2.40%) Grafana
8 117 (2.23%) Prometheus
9 68 (1.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.72%) Argo
11 33 (0.63%) Puppet
12 22 (0.42%) Nessus
13 20 (0.38%) Istio
13 20 (0.38%) Progress Chef
14 18 (0.34%) Kibana
14 18 (0.34%) Nmap
14 18 (0.34%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.32%) FortiGate
15 17 (0.32%) vRealize
16 16 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,750 (33.30%) Microsoft
2 524 (9.97%) Databricks
3 315 (5.99%) Oracle
4 286 (5.44%) Google
5 243 (4.62%) ServiceNow
6 229 (4.36%) VMware
7 147 (2.80%) SAP
8 139 (2.64%) Cisco
8 139 (2.64%) OpenAI
9 136 (2.59%) Splunk
10 111 (2.11%) Salesforce
11 108 (2.05%) CyberArk
12 84 (1.60%) Palo Alto
13 75 (1.43%) Foundry
14 68 (1.29%) Okta
15 63 (1.20%) BeyondTrust
15 63 (1.20%) Citrix
16 60 (1.14%) Red Hat
17 52 (0.99%) IBM
18 48 (0.91%) Fortinet