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

6 months to
13 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,419 4,119 5,196
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.88% 15.81% 13.74%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.07% 42.17% 41.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,862 2,784 3,866
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £527 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.19% -4.27% -2.96%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £715 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 24 72
10th Percentile £20.82 £21.06 £17.78
25th Percentile £41.02 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £65.88 £65.00 £59.96
90th Percentile £86.00 £76.68 £70.70
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £30.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +86.99% -33.41% -13.44%

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 12,882 9,767 12,510
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.74% 37.48% 33.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,890 6,533 9,091
10th Percentile £305 £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 350 141 301
10th Percentile £14.49 £15.44 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.05 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +34.55% +24.15% -11.40%
75th Percentile £59.48 £47.50 £48.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.75 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £27.43 £22.50
% change year-on-year +31.27% +21.89% -10.00%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 2,924 £540 -1.82% 915
North of England 0 702 £475 +2.70% 522
South East -1 691 £500 -4.76% 747
Midlands -2 452 £500 -1.23% 299
North West -1 345 £450 - 295
West Midlands +1 341 £525 -4.55% 186
South West +5 339 £500 -4.76% 244
Yorkshire -2 309 £487 +2.58% 157
East of England -2 155 £550 +15.79% 197
East Midlands -4 110 £436 -3.11% 113
North East -1 52 £515 +10.87% 75
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
1 273 (5.04%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 151 (2.79%) Apache Spark
4 128 (2.36%) Confluence
5 82 (1.51%) Apache
6 65 (1.20%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.42%) CMS
7 23 (0.42%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.28%) Appian
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
11 11 (0.20%) nginx
11 11 (0.20%) Skype for Business
12 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
12 9 (0.17%) Mendix
12 9 (0.17%) WebLogic
13 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 117 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 93 (1.72%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.89%) MS Visio
4 47 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.092%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.092%) Weka
10 4 (0.074%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.037%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.037%) Windchill
12 1 (0.018%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.018%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.018%) CPLEX
12 1 (0.018%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.018%) Revit
12 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 95 (1.75%) Dynamics CRM
2 56 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
4 11 (0.20%) Maximo
5 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
6 9 (0.17%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.13%) Endur
7 7 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
8 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.092%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.092%) Oracle Assets
9 5 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.092%) Oracle General Ledger
9 5 (0.092%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.092%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 1,908 (35.21%) AWS
2 1,124 (20.74%) GCP
3 1,064 (19.63%) Azure DevOps
4 733 (13.53%) Power Platform
5 679 (12.53%) Entra ID
6 651 (12.01%) Microsoft 365
7 537 (9.91%) GitHub
8 394 (7.27%) Azure Data Factory
9 318 (5.87%) Serverless
10 293 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
11 247 (4.56%) Dynamics 365
12 242 (4.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 233 (4.30%) SaaS
14 221 (4.08%) Azure AKS
15 215 (3.97%) Power Automate
16 204 (3.76%) Azure Monitor
17 199 (3.67%) Azure Functions
18 195 (3.60%) Azure Logic Apps
19 182 (3.36%) PaaS
20 177 (3.27%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 359 (6.62%) Firewall
2 246 (4.54%) DNS
3 184 (3.40%) VPN
4 152 (2.80%) Network Security
5 148 (2.73%) DHCP
6 126 (2.33%) WAN
7 94 (1.73%) TCP/IP
8 90 (1.66%) LAN
9 72 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.20%) Kerberos
11 64 (1.18%) VLAN
12 58 (1.07%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.72%) HTTP
14 35 (0.65%) BGP
15 32 (0.59%) Wireless
16 27 (0.50%) Internet
16 27 (0.50%) SAN
16 27 (0.50%) SSL
17 26 (0.48%) MPLS
17 26 (0.48%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 516 (9.52%) Power BI
2 305 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 268 (4.95%) Data Warehouse
4 258 (4.76%) Data Lake
5 192 (3.54%) PostgreSQL
6 180 (3.32%) Azure SQL Database
7 167 (3.08%) NoSQL
8 129 (2.38%) Metadata
9 104 (1.92%) Relational Database
10 93 (1.72%) Delta Lake
11 89 (1.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 76 (1.40%) MongoDB
13 65 (1.20%) Tableau
14 63 (1.16%) Big Data
15 62 (1.14%) Oracle Database
16 53 (0.98%) MySQL
17 52 (0.96%) BigQuery
18 48 (0.89%) Snowflake Schema
19 46 (0.85%) Redis
20 39 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 411 (7.58%) Git
2 361 (6.66%) JIRA
3 265 (4.89%) Jenkins
4 202 (3.73%) GitLab
5 79 (1.46%) Selenium
6 73 (1.35%) Postman
7 51 (0.94%) SonarQube
8 45 (0.83%) MLflow
9 43 (0.79%) JUnit
10 40 (0.74%) Cucumber
11 38 (0.70%) JMeter
12 37 (0.68%) REST Assured
13 36 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
14 32 (0.59%) Cypress.io
15 29 (0.54%) Artifactory
16 27 (0.50%) Visual Studio
17 26 (0.48%) Maven
18 25 (0.46%) Bitbucket
18 25 (0.46%) TestRail
19 24 (0.44%) ERwin
General
1 1,696 (31.30%) Social Skills
2 980 (18.08%) Finance
3 577 (10.65%) Public Sector
4 556 (10.26%) Analytical Skills
5 333 (6.15%) Banking
6 185 (3.41%) Documentation Skills
7 108 (1.99%) Legal
8 99 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 87 (1.61%) Presentation Skills
10 83 (1.53%) Retail
11 82 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
12 77 (1.42%) Marketing
13 65 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
14 64 (1.18%) Investment Banking
15 58 (1.07%) Telecoms
16 54 (1.00%) Law
17 53 (0.98%) Financial Institution
18 40 (0.74%) Manufacturing
19 37 (0.68%) Front Office
20 36 (0.66%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 899 (16.59%) Architect
2 755 (13.93%) Developer
3 583 (10.76%) Senior
4 442 (8.16%) Azure Engineer
5 432 (7.97%) Data Engineer
6 383 (7.07%) Lead
7 370 (6.83%) Analyst
8 276 (5.09%) Solutions Architect
9 270 (4.98%) DevOps Engineer
10 233 (4.30%) Consultant
11 169 (3.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 142 (2.62%) Security Engineer
13 139 (2.57%) Cloud Engineer
14 136 (2.51%) Azure Architect
14 136 (2.51%) Senior Developer
15 128 (2.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 120 (2.21%) Platform Engineer
17 110 (2.03%) Data Architect
18 109 (2.01%) Azure Data Engineer
19 105 (1.94%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 416 (7.68%) .NET
2 376 (6.94%) REST
3 248 (4.58%) React
4 214 (3.95%) Kafka
5 204 (3.76%) PySpark
6 201 (3.71%) RESTful
7 193 (3.56%) Node.js
8 179 (3.30%) OAuth
9 159 (2.93%) Spring
10 147 (2.71%) HTML
11 145 (2.68%) LDAP
12 139 (2.57%) Spring Boot
13 134 (2.47%) AngularJS
14 129 (2.38%) CSS
15 124 (2.29%) PyTorch
16 122 (2.25%) SOAP
17 120 (2.21%) JSON
18 117 (2.16%) SAML
19 116 (2.14%) TensorFlow
20 111 (2.05%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 476 (8.78%) Cloud Native
2 216 (3.99%) Onboarding
3 175 (3.23%) Product Ownership
4 152 (2.80%) Hybrid Cloud
5 149 (2.75%) Security Posture
6 147 (2.71%) Enterprise Software
7 141 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
8 114 (2.10%) Data Centre
9 99 (1.83%) Public Cloud
10 85 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
11 79 (1.46%) Replication
12 75 (1.38%) Data Structures
13 71 (1.31%) AI Agents
14 62 (1.14%) Algorithms
15 61 (1.13%) Management Information System
16 56 (1.03%) Low-Code
17 55 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
18 51 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
19 47 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
20 46 (0.85%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 638 (11.77%) Windows
2 320 (5.91%) Linux
3 185 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 122 (2.25%) Windows 10
5 67 (1.24%) Unix
6 56 (1.03%) VMS
7 45 (0.83%) Apple iOS
8 44 (0.81%) Mac OS
9 37 (0.68%) Android
10 32 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.37%) Ubuntu
13 19 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
14 11 (0.20%) CentOS
14 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
15 7 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
17 5 (0.092%) AIX
18 3 (0.055%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,963 (36.22%) DevOps
2 1,595 (29.43%) CI/CD
3 1,320 (24.36%) Agile
4 1,036 (19.12%) Problem-Solving
5 836 (15.43%) Analytics
6 760 (14.02%) AI
7 711 (13.12%) Infrastructure as Code
8 639 (11.79%) Migration
9 592 (10.92%) Business Intelligence
10 557 (10.28%) Data Modelling
11 554 (10.22%) Stakeholder Management
12 537 (9.91%) Containerisation
13 490 (9.04%) Continuous Improvement
14 486 (8.97%) ETL
15 480 (8.86%) Machine Learning
16 466 (8.60%) Data Pipeline
17 464 (8.56%) Microservices
18 461 (8.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 444 (8.19%) Data Engineering
20 424 (7.82%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,399 (25.82%) Python
2 1,206 (22.26%) SQL
3 612 (11.29%) PowerShell
4 459 (8.47%) Java
5 454 (8.38%) C#
6 406 (7.49%) JavaScript
7 229 (4.23%) TypeScript
8 227 (4.19%) Bash
9 162 (2.99%) Bicep
10 89 (1.64%) Scala
11 78 (1.44%) Go
12 76 (1.40%) PL/SQL
13 65 (1.20%) Kusto Query Language
14 61 (1.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 55 (1.01%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.76%) R
17 33 (0.61%) C++
18 27 (0.50%) Shell Script
19 25 (0.46%) PHP
20 20 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,317 (24.30%) Security Cleared
2 1,087 (20.06%) SC Cleared
3 455 (8.40%) Degree
4 329 (6.07%) Azure Certification
5 191 (3.52%) Computer Science Degree
6 156 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
7 148 (2.73%) CISSP
8 117 (2.16%) AWS Certification
9 115 (2.12%) DV Cleared
10 93 (1.72%) CISM
11 85 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
12 82 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
13 72 (1.33%) Master's Degree
14 45 (0.83%) PMI Certification
14 45 (0.83%) TOGAF Certification
15 41 (0.76%) CCNP
15 41 (0.76%) PMP
16 40 (0.74%) ISTQB
17 32 (0.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 29 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 353 (6.51%) Data Quality
2 348 (6.42%) GDPR
3 284 (5.24%) QA
4 266 (4.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 205 (3.78%) NIST
6 101 (1.86%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.51%) NCSC
8 74 (1.37%) PCI DSS
9 53 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 51 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 45 (0.83%) SLA
12 35 (0.65%) HIPAA
13 33 (0.61%) PMO
13 33 (0.61%) SOC 2
14 30 (0.55%) WCAG
15 28 (0.52%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.52%) GRC
16 24 (0.44%) PSD2
17 23 (0.42%) ISO 20022
18 22 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 757 (13.97%) Active Directory
2 654 (12.07%) Docker
3 176 (3.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 86 (1.59%) Hyper-V
5 79 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
6 70 (1.29%) Virtual Desktop
7 61 (1.13%) vSphere
8 20 (0.37%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.20%) Squid
11 10 (0.18%) Postfix
12 9 (0.17%) DFS Replication
13 8 (0.15%) Firmware
13 8 (0.15%) NFS
14 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.13%) KVM
14 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.13%) Snort
15 6 (0.11%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 812 (14.98%) Terraform
2 784 (14.47%) Kubernetes
3 321 (5.92%) Microsoft Intune
4 238 (4.39%) Ansible
5 142 (2.62%) Single Sign-On
6 131 (2.42%) SCCM
7 129 (2.38%) Grafana
8 114 (2.10%) Prometheus
9 72 (1.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.72%) Argo
11 26 (0.48%) Puppet
12 23 (0.42%) Nessus
13 20 (0.37%) Istio
14 19 (0.35%) Nmap
15 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.33%) Kibana
15 18 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 18 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.31%) vRealize
17 16 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,793 (33.09%) Microsoft
2 549 (10.13%) Databricks
3 303 (5.59%) Oracle
4 291 (5.37%) Google
5 249 (4.59%) ServiceNow
6 232 (4.28%) VMware
7 153 (2.82%) SAP
8 146 (2.69%) OpenAI
9 141 (2.60%) Cisco
10 137 (2.53%) Splunk
11 111 (2.05%) CyberArk
12 110 (2.03%) Salesforce
13 88 (1.62%) Palo Alto
14 80 (1.48%) Foundry
15 68 (1.25%) Okta
16 64 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
16 64 (1.18%) Citrix
17 63 (1.16%) Red Hat
18 53 (0.98%) IBM
19 50 (0.92%) Fortinet