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

6 months to
23 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,475 4,105 5,194
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.78% 16.00% 13.73%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.17% 42.54% 41.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,908 2,793 3,836
10th Percentile £350 £354 £350
25th Percentile £423 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £729 £745
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -3.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 24 70
10th Percentile £24.56 £23.65 £17.78
25th Percentile £53.28 £24.70 £23.06
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -19.69%
75th Percentile £61.66 £65.94 £59.99
90th Percentile £86.80 £77.41 £66.30
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 12,984 9,650 12,469
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.43% 37.61% 32.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,962 6,496 9,030
10th Percentile £306 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £418 £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 361 148 312
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.38 £14.14
25th Percentile £19.19 £21.25 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £27.63 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +42.96% +28.51% -14.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £47.63 £46.18
90th Percentile £79.50 £74.28 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £37.54 £27.50 £21.50
% change year-on-year +36.51% +27.91% -14.00%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 2,958 £540 -1.82% 934
North of England 0 712 £488 +2.63% 546
South East -1 693 £500 -8.26% 730
Midlands -2 455 £500 - 319
North West 0 355 £465 -1.38% 298
West Midlands -2 340 £525 -2.10% 197
South West +3 333 £512 -3.49% 237
Yorkshire -3 307 £500 +5.26% 163
East of England -1 161 £550 +4.76% 188
East Midlands -2 113 £433 -3.78% 121
North East -5 54 £515 +8.42% 93
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
1 262 (4.79%) SharePoint
2 186 (3.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 151 (2.76%) Apache Spark
4 142 (2.59%) Confluence
5 83 (1.52%) Apache
6 71 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
7 20 (0.37%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.27%) Appian
8 15 (0.27%) CMS
9 14 (0.26%) SAS
10 13 (0.24%) ArcGIS
11 12 (0.22%) Camunda
12 10 (0.18%) HCL Notes
13 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.16%) IIS
13 9 (0.16%) Mendix
13 9 (0.16%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.15%) Skype for Business
14 8 (0.15%) Smallworld
15 7 (0.13%) Jupyter
Applications
1 106 (1.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 86 (1.57%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.84%) MS Visio
4 43 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
6 13 (0.24%) 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
10 3 (0.055%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 2 (0.037%) SOLIDWORKS
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
12 1 (0.018%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 95 (1.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.20%) Maximo
4 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.16%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.13%) Endur
6 7 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.091%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.091%) Oracle Payables
8 5 (0.091%) Oracle Receivables
8 5 (0.091%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.091%) SAP BPC
8 5 (0.091%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,938 (35.40%) AWS
2 1,127 (20.58%) GCP
3 1,068 (19.51%) Azure DevOps
4 743 (13.57%) Power Platform
5 697 (12.73%) Entra ID
6 660 (12.05%) Microsoft 365
7 542 (9.90%) GitHub
8 402 (7.34%) Azure Data Factory
9 310 (5.66%) Serverless
10 302 (5.52%) GitHub Actions
11 249 (4.55%) Dynamics 365
12 248 (4.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 234 (4.27%) SaaS
14 212 (3.87%) Azure AKS
14 212 (3.87%) Power Automate
15 198 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
16 196 (3.58%) Azure Functions
17 188 (3.43%) Azure Logic Apps
17 188 (3.43%) PaaS
18 177 (3.23%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 368 (6.72%) Firewall
2 249 (4.55%) DNS
3 190 (3.47%) VPN
4 164 (3.00%) Network Security
5 153 (2.79%) DHCP
6 127 (2.32%) WAN
7 94 (1.72%) LAN
8 92 (1.68%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
10 68 (1.24%) VLAN
11 65 (1.19%) Kerberos
12 60 (1.10%) SD-WAN
13 37 (0.68%) HTTP
14 33 (0.60%) BGP
15 32 (0.58%) Wireless
16 30 (0.55%) SSL
17 29 (0.53%) Internet
18 28 (0.51%) OSPF
19 27 (0.49%) MPLS
20 26 (0.47%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 511 (9.33%) Power BI
2 308 (5.63%) SQL Server
3 281 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
4 268 (4.89%) Data Lake
5 199 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
6 180 (3.29%) Azure SQL Database
7 158 (2.89%) NoSQL
8 131 (2.39%) Metadata
9 105 (1.92%) Delta Lake
10 103 (1.88%) Relational Database
11 87 (1.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 74 (1.35%) MongoDB
13 66 (1.21%) Big Data
14 65 (1.19%) Tableau
15 61 (1.11%) Oracle Database
16 55 (1.00%) BigQuery
17 52 (0.95%) MySQL
18 48 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
19 45 (0.82%) Redis
20 38 (0.69%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 410 (7.49%) Git
2 372 (6.79%) JIRA
3 263 (4.80%) Jenkins
4 207 (3.78%) GitLab
5 87 (1.59%) Selenium
6 74 (1.35%) Postman
7 54 (0.99%) JUnit
8 49 (0.89%) MLflow
9 48 (0.88%) Cucumber
10 46 (0.84%) JMeter
11 45 (0.82%) SonarQube
12 37 (0.68%) REST Assured
13 36 (0.66%) Oracle APEX
14 33 (0.60%) Cypress.io
15 29 (0.53%) Artifactory
16 28 (0.51%) TestRail
17 26 (0.47%) Bitbucket
17 26 (0.47%) Maven
17 26 (0.47%) Visual Studio
18 23 (0.42%) ERwin
General
1 1,688 (30.83%) Social Skills
2 994 (18.16%) Finance
3 577 (10.54%) Public Sector
4 562 (10.26%) Analytical Skills
5 322 (5.88%) Banking
6 185 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (1.92%) Legal
8 95 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 86 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
10 85 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
11 82 (1.50%) Retail
12 73 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
13 71 (1.30%) Marketing
14 61 (1.11%) Investment Banking
15 57 (1.04%) Telecoms
16 56 (1.02%) Financial Institution
17 53 (0.97%) Law
18 41 (0.75%) Manufacturing
19 38 (0.69%) Front Office
20 36 (0.66%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 905 (16.53%) Architect
2 745 (13.61%) Developer
3 613 (11.20%) Senior
4 452 (8.26%) Azure Engineer
5 447 (8.16%) Data Engineer
6 397 (7.25%) Lead
7 378 (6.90%) Analyst
8 274 (5.00%) Solutions Architect
9 266 (4.86%) DevOps Engineer
10 246 (4.49%) Consultant
11 164 (3.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 150 (2.74%) Security Engineer
13 147 (2.68%) Cloud Engineer
14 136 (2.48%) Azure Architect
14 136 (2.48%) Senior Developer
15 128 (2.34%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 120 (2.19%) Platform Engineer
17 109 (1.99%) Azure Data Engineer
17 109 (1.99%) Business Analyst
17 109 (1.99%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 408 (7.45%) .NET
2 377 (6.89%) REST
3 253 (4.62%) React
4 211 (3.85%) Kafka
5 208 (3.80%) PySpark
6 196 (3.58%) RESTful
7 188 (3.43%) Node.js
8 174 (3.18%) OAuth
9 165 (3.01%) Spring
10 144 (2.63%) HTML
11 142 (2.59%) LDAP
12 139 (2.54%) AngularJS
12 139 (2.54%) Spring Boot
13 130 (2.37%) PyTorch
14 127 (2.32%) CSS
15 126 (2.30%) SOAP
16 120 (2.19%) SAML
17 118 (2.16%) Middleware
18 117 (2.14%) TensorFlow
19 115 (2.10%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 481 (8.79%) Cloud Native
2 217 (3.96%) Onboarding
3 186 (3.40%) Product Ownership
4 156 (2.85%) Security Posture
5 153 (2.79%) Hybrid Cloud
6 145 (2.65%) Enterprise Software
7 138 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
8 115 (2.10%) Data Centre
9 101 (1.84%) Public Cloud
10 88 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
11 79 (1.44%) AI Agents
12 78 (1.42%) Data Structures
13 77 (1.41%) Replication
14 62 (1.13%) Algorithms
15 61 (1.11%) Management Information System
16 58 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
17 55 (1.00%) Low-Code
18 51 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
19 47 (0.86%) Analytical Mindset
20 46 (0.84%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 627 (11.45%) Windows
2 314 (5.74%) Linux
3 179 (3.27%) Windows Server
4 116 (2.12%) Windows 10
5 61 (1.11%) Unix
6 54 (0.99%) VMS
7 46 (0.84%) Mac OS
8 37 (0.68%) Apple iOS
9 33 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 29 (0.53%) Android
11 20 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
12 19 (0.35%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
13 12 (0.22%) CentOS
14 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.091%) AIX
18 3 (0.055%) Amazon Linux
18 3 (0.055%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,975 (36.07%) DevOps
2 1,628 (29.74%) CI/CD
3 1,315 (24.02%) Agile
4 1,015 (18.54%) Problem-Solving
5 846 (15.45%) Analytics
6 783 (14.30%) AI
7 716 (13.08%) Infrastructure as Code
8 666 (12.16%) Migration
9 586 (10.70%) Business Intelligence
10 579 (10.58%) Stakeholder Management
11 572 (10.45%) Data Modelling
12 539 (9.84%) Containerisation
13 517 (9.44%) Continuous Improvement
14 496 (9.06%) ETL
15 493 (9.00%) Machine Learning
16 492 (8.99%) Data Pipeline
17 478 (8.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 470 (8.58%) Microservices
19 460 (8.40%) Data Engineering
20 429 (7.84%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,423 (25.99%) Python
2 1,223 (22.34%) SQL
3 616 (11.25%) PowerShell
4 453 (8.27%) Java
5 450 (8.22%) C#
6 418 (7.63%) JavaScript
7 227 (4.15%) TypeScript
8 221 (4.04%) Bash
9 164 (3.00%) Bicep
10 91 (1.66%) Scala
11 77 (1.41%) PL/SQL
12 74 (1.35%) Go
13 61 (1.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 61 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
14 59 (1.08%) T-SQL
15 39 (0.71%) R
16 29 (0.53%) C++
17 26 (0.47%) PHP
17 26 (0.47%) Shell Script
18 19 (0.35%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,336 (24.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,098 (20.05%) SC Cleared
3 444 (8.11%) Degree
4 328 (5.99%) Azure Certification
5 187 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 160 (2.92%) Microsoft Certification
7 155 (2.83%) CISSP
8 119 (2.17%) AWS Certification
9 116 (2.12%) DV Cleared
10 98 (1.79%) CISM
11 89 (1.63%) Cisco Certification
12 80 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
13 72 (1.32%) Master's Degree
14 52 (0.95%) TOGAF Certification
15 44 (0.80%) CCNP
16 43 (0.79%) PMI Certification
17 41 (0.75%) ISTQB
17 41 (0.75%) PMP
18 31 (0.57%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 31 (0.57%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 370 (6.76%) Data Quality
2 351 (6.41%) GDPR
3 288 (5.26%) QA
4 264 (4.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 208 (3.80%) NIST
6 100 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.52%) NCSC
8 76 (1.39%) PCI DSS
9 57 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
10 53 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 46 (0.84%) SLA
12 35 (0.64%) HIPAA
12 35 (0.64%) PMO
13 31 (0.57%) SOC 2
14 30 (0.55%) GRC
15 29 (0.53%) WCAG
16 25 (0.46%) EU AI Act
17 23 (0.42%) ISO 20022
18 22 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 22 (0.40%) PSD2
System Software
1 764 (13.95%) Active Directory
2 653 (11.93%) Docker
3 174 (3.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 86 (1.57%) Hyper-V
5 80 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
6 72 (1.32%) Virtual Desktop
7 65 (1.19%) vSphere
8 22 (0.40%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
10 9 (0.16%) Postfix
11 8 (0.15%) NFS
11 8 (0.15%) Snort
12 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 7 (0.13%) Firmware
12 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.11%) DFS Replication
13 6 (0.11%) GPFS
13 6 (0.11%) KVM
13 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 831 (15.18%) Terraform
2 798 (14.58%) Kubernetes
3 324 (5.92%) Microsoft Intune
4 235 (4.29%) Ansible
5 146 (2.67%) Single Sign-On
6 130 (2.37%) Grafana
7 125 (2.28%) SCCM
8 114 (2.08%) Prometheus
9 72 (1.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.71%) Argo
11 25 (0.46%) Puppet
12 21 (0.38%) Istio
13 20 (0.37%) Progress Chef
14 19 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
14 19 (0.35%) Nessus
14 19 (0.35%) Nmap
15 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 16 (0.29%) vRealize
17 14 (0.26%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,802 (32.91%) Microsoft
2 568 (10.37%) Databricks
3 299 (5.46%) Oracle
4 279 (5.10%) Google
5 252 (4.60%) ServiceNow
6 231 (4.22%) VMware
7 159 (2.90%) SAP
8 143 (2.61%) Cisco
9 140 (2.56%) OpenAI
10 136 (2.48%) Splunk
11 109 (1.99%) CyberArk
12 103 (1.88%) Salesforce
13 89 (1.63%) Palo Alto
14 84 (1.53%) Foundry
15 69 (1.26%) Okta
16 68 (1.24%) Citrix
17 64 (1.17%) Red Hat
18 63 (1.15%) BeyondTrust
19 56 (1.02%) IBM
20 49 (0.89%) Fortinet