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 18 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,488 4,082 5,154
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.87% 15.81% 13.67%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.16% 42.23% 41.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,914 2,768 3,810
10th Percentile £350 £352 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £439
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.26% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% -3.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 26 71
10th Percentile £20.85 £21.78 £17.78
25th Percentile £43.24 £24.10 £23.52
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -17.90%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £60.80
90th Percentile £84.20 £77.35 £71.25
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%

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 13,018 9,667 12,444
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.64% 37.45% 32.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,988 6,472 9,007
10th Percentile £306 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £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 357 143 308
10th Percentile £14.80 £15.60 £14.09
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +34.55% +25.00% -12.00%
75th Percentile £58.75 £48.75 £48.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.15 £67.17
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.15
% change year-on-year +34.55% +24.15% -11.40%

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 18 February 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 2,969 £538 -2.27% 936
North of England -1 701 £475 +0.74% 544
South East -1 696 £500 -7.24% 775
Midlands -2 459 £500 -4.31% 300
South West +5 349 £500 -6.54% 241
North West -1 347 £450 -3.28% 305
West Midlands +2 344 £525 -4.55% 176
Yorkshire -2 306 £488 +2.63% 160
East of England -1 157 £550 +4.76% 198
East Midlands -4 113 £433 -3.78% 124
North East 0 52 £515 +10.87% 84
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
1 271 (4.94%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 149 (2.72%) Apache Spark
4 136 (2.48%) Confluence
5 80 (1.46%) Apache
6 66 (1.20%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.38%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.27%) Appian
8 15 (0.27%) CMS
9 14 (0.26%) SAS
10 13 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.24%) Camunda
11 11 (0.20%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.20%) IIS
12 10 (0.18%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.16%) Mendix
13 9 (0.16%) nginx
13 9 (0.16%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 115 (2.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 91 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.86%) MS Visio
4 45 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 38 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.091%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.091%) Weka
9 4 (0.073%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.073%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 2 (0.036%) SOLIDWORKS
10 2 (0.036%) Windchill
11 1 (0.018%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.018%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.018%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
11 1 (0.018%) Revit
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 94 (1.71%) Dynamics CRM
2 57 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.20%) Maximo
4 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.16%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.13%) Endur
7 7 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
8 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.091%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.091%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.091%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.091%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.091%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,937 (35.30%) AWS
2 1,140 (20.77%) GCP
3 1,067 (19.44%) Azure DevOps
4 740 (13.48%) Power Platform
5 685 (12.48%) Entra ID
6 659 (12.01%) Microsoft 365
7 543 (9.89%) GitHub
8 403 (7.34%) Azure Data Factory
9 309 (5.63%) Serverless
10 298 (5.43%) GitHub Actions
11 249 (4.54%) Dynamics 365
12 248 (4.52%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 239 (4.35%) SaaS
14 216 (3.94%) Azure AKS
15 211 (3.84%) Power Automate
16 202 (3.68%) Azure Monitor
17 193 (3.52%) Azure Functions
18 188 (3.43%) Azure Logic Apps
19 185 (3.37%) PaaS
20 179 (3.26%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 366 (6.67%) Firewall
2 245 (4.46%) DNS
3 193 (3.52%) VPN
4 163 (2.97%) Network Security
5 152 (2.77%) DHCP
6 128 (2.33%) WAN
7 94 (1.71%) LAN
8 93 (1.69%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.38%) Wi-Fi
10 67 (1.22%) VLAN
11 65 (1.18%) Kerberos
12 59 (1.08%) SD-WAN
13 38 (0.69%) HTTP
14 35 (0.64%) BGP
15 33 (0.60%) Wireless
16 28 (0.51%) Internet
16 28 (0.51%) OSPF
17 27 (0.49%) SSL
18 25 (0.46%) MPLS
18 25 (0.46%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 515 (9.38%) Power BI
2 306 (5.58%) SQL Server
3 280 (5.10%) Data Warehouse
4 265 (4.83%) Data Lake
5 197 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
6 179 (3.26%) Azure SQL Database
7 164 (2.99%) NoSQL
8 133 (2.42%) Metadata
9 105 (1.91%) Relational Database
10 99 (1.80%) Delta Lake
11 90 (1.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 74 (1.35%) MongoDB
13 65 (1.18%) Tableau
14 63 (1.15%) Big Data
15 61 (1.11%) Oracle Database
16 53 (0.97%) MySQL
17 52 (0.95%) BigQuery
18 49 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
19 46 (0.84%) Redis
20 39 (0.71%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 406 (7.40%) Git
2 370 (6.74%) JIRA
3 261 (4.76%) Jenkins
4 202 (3.68%) GitLab
5 82 (1.49%) Selenium
6 73 (1.33%) Postman
7 47 (0.86%) SonarQube
8 46 (0.84%) JUnit
8 46 (0.84%) MLflow
9 43 (0.78%) Cucumber
10 41 (0.75%) JMeter
11 37 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
13 33 (0.60%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.53%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.49%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.47%) TestRail
17 25 (0.46%) Bitbucket
17 25 (0.46%) Maven
18 24 (0.44%) ERwin
General
1 1,711 (31.18%) Social Skills
2 1,003 (18.28%) Finance
3 583 (10.62%) Public Sector
4 564 (10.28%) Analytical Skills
5 333 (6.07%) Banking
6 186 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
7 109 (1.99%) Legal
8 97 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 88 (1.60%) Presentation Skills
10 86 (1.57%) Influencing Skills
11 77 (1.40%) Retail
12 76 (1.38%) Marketing
13 70 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
14 64 (1.17%) Investment Banking
15 60 (1.09%) Telecoms
16 53 (0.97%) Financial Institution
16 53 (0.97%) Law
17 41 (0.75%) Manufacturing
18 39 (0.71%) Front Office
19 38 (0.69%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 911 (16.60%) Architect
2 756 (13.78%) Developer
3 595 (10.84%) Senior
4 453 (8.25%) Azure Engineer
5 448 (8.16%) Data Engineer
6 389 (7.09%) Lead
7 378 (6.89%) Analyst
8 280 (5.10%) Solutions Architect
9 273 (4.97%) DevOps Engineer
10 242 (4.41%) Consultant
11 167 (3.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 144 (2.62%) Security Engineer
13 143 (2.61%) Cloud Engineer
14 136 (2.48%) Azure Architect
15 134 (2.44%) Senior Developer
16 127 (2.31%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 123 (2.24%) Platform Engineer
18 113 (2.06%) Data Architect
19 111 (2.02%) Azure Data Engineer
20 109 (1.99%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 414 (7.54%) .NET
2 379 (6.91%) REST
3 248 (4.52%) React
4 213 (3.88%) Kafka
5 207 (3.77%) PySpark
6 197 (3.59%) RESTful
7 189 (3.44%) Node.js
8 181 (3.30%) OAuth
9 162 (2.95%) Spring
10 144 (2.62%) LDAP
11 141 (2.57%) HTML
12 139 (2.53%) Spring Boot
13 134 (2.44%) AngularJS
14 124 (2.26%) PyTorch
15 123 (2.24%) CSS
16 121 (2.20%) SOAP
17 119 (2.17%) SAML
18 117 (2.13%) JSON
18 117 (2.13%) Middleware
18 117 (2.13%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 475 (8.66%) Cloud Native
2 221 (4.03%) Onboarding
3 182 (3.32%) Product Ownership
4 151 (2.75%) Hybrid Cloud
5 149 (2.72%) Security Posture
6 145 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
7 142 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
8 116 (2.11%) Data Centre
9 98 (1.79%) Public Cloud
10 82 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
11 79 (1.44%) AI Agents
12 76 (1.38%) Replication
13 75 (1.37%) Data Structures
14 61 (1.11%) Algorithms
14 61 (1.11%) Management Information System
15 57 (1.04%) Data Protection Act
16 56 (1.02%) Low-Code
17 51 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
18 48 (0.87%) NHS
19 46 (0.84%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 642 (11.70%) Windows
2 317 (5.78%) Linux
3 186 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 123 (2.24%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.20%) Unix
6 55 (1.00%) VMS
7 45 (0.82%) Mac OS
8 42 (0.77%) Apple iOS
9 34 (0.62%) Android
10 31 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.38%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.33%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.20%) CentOS
14 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
15 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.091%) AIX
17 4 (0.073%) Amazon Linux
18 3 (0.055%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,977 (36.02%) DevOps
2 1,615 (29.43%) CI/CD
3 1,330 (24.23%) Agile
4 1,038 (18.91%) Problem-Solving
5 838 (15.27%) Analytics
6 780 (14.21%) AI
7 716 (13.05%) Infrastructure as Code
8 653 (11.90%) Migration
9 591 (10.77%) Business Intelligence
10 569 (10.37%) Stakeholder Management
11 562 (10.24%) Data Modelling
12 540 (9.84%) Containerisation
13 509 (9.27%) Continuous Improvement
14 494 (9.00%) ETL
15 485 (8.84%) Machine Learning
16 479 (8.73%) Data Pipeline
17 472 (8.60%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 466 (8.49%) Microservices
19 450 (8.20%) Data Engineering
20 427 (7.78%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,422 (25.91%) Python
2 1,214 (22.12%) SQL
3 612 (11.15%) PowerShell
4 457 (8.33%) Java
5 453 (8.25%) C#
6 414 (7.54%) JavaScript
7 234 (4.26%) TypeScript
8 224 (4.08%) Bash
9 162 (2.95%) Bicep
10 89 (1.62%) Scala
11 77 (1.40%) Go
12 76 (1.38%) PL/SQL
13 65 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
14 61 (1.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 57 (1.04%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.73%) R
17 32 (0.58%) C++
18 26 (0.47%) PHP
18 26 (0.47%) Shell Script
19 20 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,339 (24.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,105 (20.13%) SC Cleared
3 450 (8.20%) Degree
4 331 (6.03%) Azure Certification
5 191 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 158 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
7 150 (2.73%) CISSP
8 119 (2.17%) AWS Certification
8 119 (2.17%) DV Cleared
9 95 (1.73%) CISM
10 87 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
11 84 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
12 72 (1.31%) Master's Degree
13 51 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
14 42 (0.77%) PMI Certification
15 41 (0.75%) CCNP
16 40 (0.73%) ISTQB
17 39 (0.71%) PMP
18 32 (0.58%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 29 (0.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 367 (6.69%) Data Quality
2 354 (6.45%) GDPR
3 294 (5.36%) QA
4 268 (4.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 208 (3.79%) NIST
6 102 (1.86%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.49%) NCSC
8 77 (1.40%) PCI DSS
9 56 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
10 51 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 47 (0.86%) SLA
12 35 (0.64%) HIPAA
12 35 (0.64%) PMO
13 33 (0.60%) SOC 2
14 29 (0.53%) WCAG
15 28 (0.51%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.51%) GRC
16 26 (0.47%) PSD2
17 25 (0.46%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 762 (13.88%) Active Directory
2 655 (11.94%) Docker
3 175 (3.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (1.55%) Hyper-V
5 79 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
6 71 (1.29%) Virtual Desktop
7 64 (1.17%) vSphere
8 20 (0.36%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.15%) Firmware
10 8 (0.15%) NFS
10 8 (0.15%) Postfix
10 8 (0.15%) Snort
10 8 (0.15%) Squid
11 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 7 (0.13%) DFS Replication
11 7 (0.13%) KVM
11 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
11 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 827 (15.07%) Terraform
2 793 (14.45%) Kubernetes
3 325 (5.92%) Microsoft Intune
4 236 (4.30%) Ansible
5 147 (2.68%) Single Sign-On
6 128 (2.33%) Grafana
6 128 (2.33%) SCCM
7 113 (2.06%) Prometheus
8 73 (1.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 39 (0.71%) Argo
10 26 (0.47%) Puppet
11 20 (0.36%) Istio
11 20 (0.36%) Nessus
12 19 (0.35%) Nmap
13 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
13 18 (0.33%) Progress Chef
14 17 (0.31%) Jamf Pro
14 17 (0.31%) vCenter Server
14 17 (0.31%) vRealize
15 16 (0.29%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,800 (32.80%) Microsoft
2 563 (10.26%) Databricks
3 303 (5.52%) Oracle
4 291 (5.30%) Google
5 248 (4.52%) ServiceNow
6 228 (4.15%) VMware
7 156 (2.84%) SAP
8 153 (2.79%) OpenAI
9 140 (2.55%) Cisco
10 136 (2.48%) Splunk
11 111 (2.02%) CyberArk
12 107 (1.95%) Salesforce
13 90 (1.64%) Palo Alto
14 84 (1.53%) Foundry
15 68 (1.24%) Okta
16 67 (1.22%) Citrix
17 63 (1.15%) BeyondTrust
18 62 (1.13%) Red Hat
19 53 (0.97%) IBM
20 51 (0.93%) Fortinet