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

6 months to
14 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,434 4,109 5,223
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.88% 15.77% 13.73%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.09% 42.07% 41.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,880 2,780 3,888
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.84% -3.64% -3.08%
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% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 25 72
10th Percentile £20.37 £21.42 £17.78
25th Percentile £40.27 £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 £62.49 £65.00 £59.96
90th Percentile £86.78 £77.38 £70.70
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -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 12,910 9,767 12,588
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.72% 37.48% 33.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,918 6,537 9,154
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 351 142 301
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.45 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £37.00 £27.50 £22.15
Median % change year-on-year +34.55% +24.15% -11.40%
75th Percentile £58.75 £47.88 £48.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £73.25 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £27.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +30.91% +22.22% -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 14 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 14 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 14 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 2,941 £540 -1.82% 847
North of England 0 700 £475 +0.74% 540
South East -1 690 £500 -5.21% 760
Midlands -2 452 £500 -4.31% 301
North West -1 344 £450 -2.70% 305
South West +5 340 £500 -4.76% 237
West Midlands +1 339 £525 -6.50% 180
Yorkshire -2 308 £487 +2.58% 162
East of England -1 155 £550 +15.79% 196
East Midlands -2 112 £436 -3.11% 121
North East -1 52 £515 +10.87% 79
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
1 272 (5.01%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 151 (2.78%) Apache Spark
4 128 (2.36%) Confluence
5 82 (1.51%) Apache
6 66 (1.21%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.42%) OpenStack
8 21 (0.39%) CMS
9 15 (0.28%) Appian
10 14 (0.26%) SAS
11 13 (0.24%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.24%) Camunda
12 11 (0.20%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.20%) IIS
12 11 (0.20%) nginx
12 11 (0.20%) Skype for Business
13 9 (0.17%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.17%) Mendix
13 9 (0.17%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
Applications
1 116 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 92 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.88%) MS Visio
4 46 (0.85%) 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 93 (1.71%) 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 General Ledger
9 5 (0.092%) Oracle Payables
9 5 (0.092%) Oracle Receivables
9 5 (0.092%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,919 (35.31%) AWS
2 1,133 (20.85%) GCP
3 1,063 (19.56%) Azure DevOps
4 730 (13.43%) Power Platform
5 679 (12.50%) Entra ID
6 654 (12.04%) Microsoft 365
7 537 (9.88%) GitHub
8 395 (7.27%) Azure Data Factory
9 314 (5.78%) Serverless
10 295 (5.43%) GitHub Actions
11 244 (4.49%) Dynamics 365
12 243 (4.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 233 (4.29%) SaaS
14 218 (4.01%) Azure AKS
15 211 (3.88%) Power Automate
16 201 (3.70%) Azure Monitor
17 195 (3.59%) Azure Functions
18 190 (3.50%) Azure Logic Apps
19 182 (3.35%) PaaS
20 175 (3.22%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 358 (6.59%) Firewall
2 246 (4.53%) DNS
3 183 (3.37%) VPN
4 153 (2.82%) Network Security
5 149 (2.74%) DHCP
6 125 (2.30%) WAN
7 92 (1.69%) TCP/IP
8 89 (1.64%) LAN
9 72 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.20%) Kerberos
11 63 (1.16%) VLAN
12 58 (1.07%) SD-WAN
13 40 (0.74%) HTTP
14 34 (0.63%) BGP
15 31 (0.57%) Wireless
16 27 (0.50%) Internet
16 27 (0.50%) SSL
17 26 (0.48%) MPLS
17 26 (0.48%) OSPF
17 26 (0.48%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 513 (9.44%) Power BI
2 305 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 271 (4.99%) Data Warehouse
4 260 (4.78%) Data Lake
5 196 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
6 180 (3.31%) Azure SQL Database
7 165 (3.04%) NoSQL
8 130 (2.39%) Metadata
9 104 (1.91%) Relational Database
10 95 (1.75%) Delta Lake
11 89 (1.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 73 (1.34%) 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 49 (0.90%) Snowflake Schema
19 47 (0.86%) Redis
20 39 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 407 (7.49%) Git
2 364 (6.70%) JIRA
3 265 (4.88%) Jenkins
4 202 (3.72%) GitLab
5 80 (1.47%) Selenium
6 73 (1.34%) Postman
7 48 (0.88%) SonarQube
8 45 (0.83%) MLflow
9 44 (0.81%) JUnit
10 40 (0.74%) Cucumber
11 38 (0.70%) JMeter
11 38 (0.70%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
13 33 (0.61%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.53%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.50%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.48%) Maven
16 26 (0.48%) TestRail
17 25 (0.46%) Bitbucket
18 24 (0.44%) ERwin
General
1 1,697 (31.23%) Social Skills
2 984 (18.11%) Finance
3 579 (10.66%) Public Sector
4 558 (10.27%) Analytical Skills
5 331 (6.09%) Banking
6 185 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
7 108 (1.99%) Legal
8 99 (1.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 88 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
10 84 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
11 81 (1.49%) Retail
12 77 (1.42%) Marketing
13 66 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
14 64 (1.18%) Investment Banking
15 58 (1.07%) Telecoms
16 53 (0.98%) Financial Institution
16 53 (0.98%) Law
17 41 (0.75%) Front Office
18 40 (0.74%) Manufacturing
19 37 (0.68%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 902 (16.60%) Architect
2 756 (13.91%) Developer
3 586 (10.78%) Senior
4 445 (8.19%) Azure Engineer
5 435 (8.01%) Data Engineer
6 386 (7.10%) Lead
7 370 (6.81%) Analyst
8 274 (5.04%) Solutions Architect
9 271 (4.99%) DevOps Engineer
10 234 (4.31%) Consultant
11 168 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 143 (2.63%) Security Engineer
13 140 (2.58%) Cloud Engineer
14 137 (2.52%) Azure Architect
15 136 (2.50%) Senior Developer
16 127 (2.34%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 123 (2.26%) Platform Engineer
18 111 (2.04%) Data Architect
19 109 (2.01%) Azure Data Engineer
20 107 (1.97%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 414 (7.62%) .NET
2 379 (6.97%) REST
3 252 (4.64%) React
4 215 (3.96%) Kafka
5 205 (3.77%) PySpark
6 202 (3.72%) RESTful
7 193 (3.55%) Node.js
8 180 (3.31%) OAuth
9 160 (2.94%) Spring
10 148 (2.72%) HTML
11 145 (2.67%) LDAP
12 140 (2.58%) Spring Boot
13 134 (2.47%) AngularJS
14 130 (2.39%) CSS
15 123 (2.26%) PyTorch
15 123 (2.26%) SOAP
16 121 (2.23%) JSON
17 117 (2.15%) SAML
18 115 (2.12%) TensorFlow
19 114 (2.10%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 473 (8.70%) Cloud Native
2 217 (3.99%) Onboarding
3 179 (3.29%) Product Ownership
4 151 (2.78%) Hybrid Cloud
5 149 (2.74%) Security Posture
6 147 (2.71%) Enterprise Software
7 144 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
8 113 (2.08%) Data Centre
9 99 (1.82%) Public Cloud
10 81 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
11 78 (1.44%) Replication
12 75 (1.38%) Data Structures
13 74 (1.36%) AI Agents
14 63 (1.16%) Management Information System
15 62 (1.14%) Algorithms
16 56 (1.03%) Low-Code
17 55 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
18 51 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
19 47 (0.86%) Analytical Mindset
19 47 (0.86%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 638 (11.74%) Windows
2 318 (5.85%) Linux
3 185 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 123 (2.26%) Windows 10
5 67 (1.23%) Unix
6 58 (1.07%) VMS
7 44 (0.81%) Mac OS
8 43 (0.79%) Apple iOS
9 35 (0.64%) Android
10 31 (0.57%) 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 1,968 (36.22%) DevOps
2 1,599 (29.43%) CI/CD
3 1,328 (24.44%) Agile
4 1,038 (19.10%) Problem-Solving
5 837 (15.40%) Analytics
6 764 (14.06%) AI
7 715 (13.16%) Infrastructure as Code
8 641 (11.80%) Migration
9 589 (10.84%) Business Intelligence
10 559 (10.29%) Stakeholder Management
11 554 (10.20%) Data Modelling
12 538 (9.90%) Containerisation
13 498 (9.16%) Continuous Improvement
14 488 (8.98%) ETL
15 480 (8.83%) Machine Learning
16 469 (8.63%) Data Pipeline
17 464 (8.54%) Microservices
18 462 (8.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 446 (8.21%) Data Engineering
20 422 (7.77%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,404 (25.84%) Python
2 1,207 (22.21%) SQL
3 612 (11.26%) PowerShell
4 460 (8.47%) Java
5 454 (8.35%) C#
6 411 (7.56%) JavaScript
7 233 (4.29%) TypeScript
8 227 (4.18%) Bash
9 164 (3.02%) Bicep
10 89 (1.64%) Scala
11 77 (1.42%) Go
12 76 (1.40%) PL/SQL
13 65 (1.20%) Kusto Query Language
14 61 (1.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 55 (1.01%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.75%) R
17 33 (0.61%) C++
18 27 (0.50%) Shell Script
19 25 (0.46%) PHP
20 20 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,325 (24.38%) Security Cleared
2 1,094 (20.13%) SC Cleared
3 453 (8.34%) Degree
4 331 (6.09%) Azure Certification
5 191 (3.51%) Computer Science Degree
6 156 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
7 148 (2.72%) CISSP
8 120 (2.21%) AWS Certification
9 118 (2.17%) DV Cleared
10 93 (1.71%) CISM
11 85 (1.56%) Cisco Certification
12 84 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
13 72 (1.32%) Master's Degree
14 49 (0.90%) TOGAF Certification
15 44 (0.81%) PMI Certification
16 40 (0.74%) CCNP
16 40 (0.74%) ISTQB
16 40 (0.74%) PMP
17 32 (0.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 29 (0.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 355 (6.53%) Data Quality
2 349 (6.42%) GDPR
3 289 (5.32%) QA
4 267 (4.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 205 (3.77%) NIST
6 102 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.49%) NCSC
8 75 (1.38%) PCI DSS
9 54 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
10 51 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 46 (0.85%) SLA
12 35 (0.64%) 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 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 757 (13.93%) Active Directory
2 656 (12.07%) Docker
3 175 (3.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 86 (1.58%) Hyper-V
5 79 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
6 69 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
7 61 (1.12%) 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%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 818 (15.05%) Terraform
2 785 (14.45%) Kubernetes
3 322 (5.93%) Microsoft Intune
4 236 (4.34%) Ansible
5 143 (2.63%) Single Sign-On
6 131 (2.41%) SCCM
7 129 (2.37%) Grafana
8 114 (2.10%) Prometheus
9 73 (1.34%) 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
16 17 (0.31%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.31%) vRealize
17 16 (0.29%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 1,792 (32.98%) Microsoft
2 550 (10.12%) Databricks
3 303 (5.58%) Oracle
4 291 (5.36%) Google
5 250 (4.60%) ServiceNow
6 231 (4.25%) VMware
7 153 (2.82%) SAP
8 148 (2.72%) OpenAI
9 138 (2.54%) Cisco
9 138 (2.54%) Splunk
10 110 (2.02%) CyberArk
10 110 (2.02%) Salesforce
11 87 (1.60%) Palo Alto
12 83 (1.53%) Foundry
13 68 (1.25%) Okta
14 64 (1.18%) Citrix
15 63 (1.16%) BeyondTrust
16 62 (1.14%) Red Hat
17 53 (0.98%) IBM
18 50 (0.92%) Fortinet