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

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,038 4,118 5,192
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.84% 15.32% 14.14%
As % of the Cloud Services category 41.78% 41.71% 41.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,580 2,765 3,871
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £416 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £709 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -1.90% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 30 69
10th Percentile £16.25 £19.97 £17.75
25th Percentile £27.28 £23.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £55.75 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +59.29% -24.21% -9.45%
75th Percentile £71.07 £60.56 £58.00
90th Percentile £93.75 £75.67 £72.60
UK median hourly rate £53.25 £28.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +90.18% -39.37% -5.76%

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 12,058 9,874 12,405
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.91% 36.74% 33.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,360 6,572 9,057
10th Percentile £300 £313 £275
25th Percentile £406 £422 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £611 £638 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 140 252
10th Percentile £14.25 £16.70 £14.26
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.46 £17.72
Median hourly rate £30.00 £28.21 £24.02
Median % change year-on-year +6.36% +17.42% +6.14%
75th Percentile £57.25 £46.51 £52.31
90th Percentile £77.19 £68.75 £73.63
UK median hourly rate £29.11 £27.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year +5.85% +10.00% +11.11%

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 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 18 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 18 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 +1 2,720 £538 -2.27% 903
North of England 0 657 £460 +0.38% 669
South East -3 620 £492 -6.29% 1,035
Midlands -1 435 £525 +5.00% 390
West Midlands +2 330 £550 +0.81% 176
North West -1 319 £450 - 339
South West +3 305 £517 -1.48% 358
Yorkshire 0 298 £475 - 229
East of England -1 132 £500 +15.94% 365
East Midlands -3 104 £437 -2.89% 207
North East -5 44 £475 -2.56% 109
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
1 253 (5.02%) SharePoint
2 170 (3.37%) Microsoft Exchange
3 122 (2.42%) Apache Spark
4 118 (2.34%) Confluence
5 73 (1.45%) Apache
6 65 (1.29%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.46%) OpenStack
8 22 (0.44%) SAS
9 20 (0.40%) CMS
10 19 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.28%) HCL Notes
12 13 (0.26%) nginx
13 11 (0.22%) Appian
13 11 (0.22%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.22%) IIS
13 11 (0.22%) Skype for Business
14 10 (0.20%) Mendix
15 9 (0.18%) Camunda
15 9 (0.18%) GeoServer
16 8 (0.16%) Smallworld
Applications
1 114 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 86 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
3 43 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 42 (0.83%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.18%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.16%) Trello
9 5 (0.099%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.099%) Weka
10 3 (0.060%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.040%) PTC Creo
11 2 (0.040%) Windchill
12 1 (0.020%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.020%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.020%) FrameMaker
12 1 (0.020%) Revit
12 1 (0.020%) Siemens NX
12 1 (0.020%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.020%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 92 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
4 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 9 (0.18%) Maximo
4 9 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 8 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
5 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 8 (0.16%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.14%) Endur
6 7 (0.14%) NetSuite
7 6 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.12%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.12%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.099%) Dynamics NAV
8 5 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.099%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.099%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.079%) Oracle 11i
9 4 (0.079%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,811 (35.95%) AWS
2 1,052 (20.88%) GCP
3 991 (19.67%) Azure DevOps
4 682 (13.54%) Power Platform
5 607 (12.05%) Microsoft 365
6 599 (11.89%) Entra ID
7 509 (10.10%) GitHub
8 347 (6.89%) Azure Data Factory
9 300 (5.95%) Serverless
10 292 (5.80%) GitHub Actions
11 241 (4.78%) Dynamics 365
12 216 (4.29%) SaaS
13 215 (4.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 210 (4.17%) Power Automate
15 200 (3.97%) Azure AKS
16 196 (3.89%) Azure Monitor
17 192 (3.81%) Azure Logic Apps
18 188 (3.73%) Azure Functions
19 176 (3.49%) PowerApps
20 175 (3.47%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 352 (6.99%) Firewall
2 219 (4.35%) DNS
3 172 (3.41%) VPN
4 153 (3.04%) Network Security
5 126 (2.50%) DHCP
6 120 (2.38%) WAN
7 95 (1.89%) TCP/IP
8 81 (1.61%) LAN
9 65 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
10 61 (1.21%) VLAN
11 58 (1.15%) SD-WAN
12 43 (0.85%) HTTP
13 35 (0.69%) Kerberos
14 32 (0.64%) BGP
15 30 (0.60%) Wireless
16 29 (0.58%) Internet
17 24 (0.48%) MPLS
17 24 (0.48%) SAN
18 22 (0.44%) SSL
19 21 (0.42%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 491 (9.75%) Power BI
2 287 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 235 (4.66%) Data Lake
4 232 (4.61%) Data Warehouse
5 183 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
6 168 (3.33%) Azure SQL Database
7 158 (3.14%) NoSQL
8 108 (2.14%) Metadata
9 105 (2.08%) Relational Database
10 80 (1.59%) Delta Lake
11 79 (1.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 77 (1.53%) MongoDB
13 60 (1.19%) Oracle Database
14 57 (1.13%) Big Data
15 56 (1.11%) MySQL
16 55 (1.09%) Tableau
17 48 (0.95%) BigQuery
18 44 (0.87%) Redis
19 40 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
19 40 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 384 (7.62%) Git
2 348 (6.91%) JIRA
3 272 (5.40%) Jenkins
4 201 (3.99%) GitLab
5 78 (1.55%) Selenium
6 71 (1.41%) Postman
7 54 (1.07%) SonarQube
8 47 (0.93%) JUnit
9 40 (0.79%) Cucumber
10 37 (0.73%) MLflow
11 36 (0.71%) Oracle APEX
12 32 (0.64%) Maven
13 31 (0.62%) Cypress.io
14 30 (0.60%) JMeter
14 30 (0.60%) REST Assured
15 29 (0.58%) CircleCI
16 27 (0.54%) Gradle
17 26 (0.52%) Artifactory
17 26 (0.52%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.46%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,614 (32.04%) Social Skills
2 914 (18.14%) Finance
3 556 (11.04%) Public Sector
4 491 (9.75%) Analytical Skills
5 314 (6.23%) Banking
6 167 (3.31%) Documentation Skills
7 105 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 89 (1.77%) Legal
9 82 (1.63%) Retail
10 78 (1.55%) Marketing
10 78 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
11 76 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
12 68 (1.35%) Investment Banking
13 52 (1.03%) Financial Institution
13 52 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
13 52 (1.03%) Telecoms
14 50 (0.99%) Law
15 48 (0.95%) Manufacturing
16 40 (0.79%) Local Government
17 39 (0.77%) Military
Job Titles
1 805 (15.98%) Architect
2 720 (14.29%) Developer
3 542 (10.76%) Senior
4 387 (7.68%) Data Engineer
5 383 (7.60%) Azure Engineer
6 361 (7.17%) Lead
7 346 (6.87%) Analyst
8 266 (5.28%) DevOps Engineer
9 251 (4.98%) Solutions Architect
10 194 (3.85%) Consultant
11 155 (3.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 146 (2.90%) Security Engineer
13 133 (2.64%) Senior Developer
14 126 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
15 120 (2.38%) Azure Architect
16 119 (2.36%) Platform Engineer
17 105 (2.08%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 104 (2.06%) Azure Data Engineer
19 97 (1.93%) Support Engineer
20 95 (1.89%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 407 (8.08%) .NET
2 345 (6.85%) REST
3 218 (4.33%) React
4 192 (3.81%) Kafka
5 190 (3.77%) RESTful
6 186 (3.69%) PySpark
7 173 (3.43%) Node.js
8 154 (3.06%) OAuth
9 151 (3.00%) Spring
10 134 (2.66%) HTML
11 129 (2.56%) AngularJS
12 128 (2.54%) Spring Boot
13 122 (2.42%) SOAP
14 118 (2.34%) JSON
15 117 (2.32%) LDAP
16 115 (2.28%) PyTorch
17 111 (2.20%) CSS
18 107 (2.12%) TensorFlow
19 102 (2.02%) Middleware
20 95 (1.89%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 455 (9.03%) Cloud Native
2 194 (3.85%) Onboarding
3 164 (3.26%) Product Ownership
4 155 (3.08%) Enterprise Software
5 150 (2.98%) Hybrid Cloud
6 144 (2.86%) Security Posture
7 130 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
8 108 (2.14%) Data Centre
9 97 (1.93%) Public Cloud
10 85 (1.69%) Distributed Systems
11 68 (1.35%) Management Information System
12 65 (1.29%) AI Agents
12 65 (1.29%) Replication
13 61 (1.21%) Data Structures
14 58 (1.15%) Algorithms
15 55 (1.09%) Low-Code
16 51 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
17 46 (0.91%) CMDB
18 45 (0.89%) Analytical Mindset
18 45 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 597 (11.85%) Windows
2 324 (6.43%) Linux
3 182 (3.61%) Windows Server
4 114 (2.26%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.57%) Unix
6 55 (1.09%) VMS
7 45 (0.89%) Apple iOS
8 41 (0.81%) Android
9 40 (0.79%) Mac OS
10 28 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 21 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
12 20 (0.40%) Ubuntu
13 15 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
14 10 (0.20%) CentOS
15 9 (0.18%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.18%) Solaris
16 7 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.099%) AIX
17 5 (0.099%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.079%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,834 (36.40%) DevOps
2 1,476 (29.30%) CI/CD
3 1,231 (24.43%) Agile
4 974 (19.33%) Problem-Solving
5 759 (15.07%) Analytics
6 652 (12.94%) Infrastructure as Code
7 643 (12.76%) AI
8 578 (11.47%) Migration
9 563 (11.18%) Business Intelligence
10 518 (10.28%) Stakeholder Management
11 500 (9.92%) Containerisation
12 480 (9.53%) Data Modelling
13 454 (9.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 444 (8.81%) Continuous Improvement
15 423 (8.40%) Machine Learning
16 418 (8.30%) Microservices
17 415 (8.24%) ETL
18 412 (8.18%) Data Pipeline
18 412 (8.18%) Test Automation
19 376 (7.46%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,296 (25.72%) Python
2 1,110 (22.03%) SQL
3 544 (10.80%) PowerShell
4 456 (9.05%) Java
5 419 (8.32%) C#
6 387 (7.68%) JavaScript
7 230 (4.57%) Bash
8 197 (3.91%) TypeScript
9 149 (2.96%) Bicep
10 81 (1.61%) Scala
11 80 (1.59%) Go
12 72 (1.43%) PL/SQL
13 64 (1.27%) Kusto Query Language
14 51 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 50 (0.99%) T-SQL
16 48 (0.95%) R
17 32 (0.64%) C++
18 31 (0.62%) Shell Script
19 26 (0.52%) PHP
20 22 (0.44%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,234 (24.49%) Security Cleared
2 1,019 (20.23%) SC Cleared
3 422 (8.38%) Degree
4 304 (6.03%) Azure Certification
5 170 (3.37%) Computer Science Degree
6 143 (2.84%) Microsoft Certification
7 142 (2.82%) CISSP
8 116 (2.30%) DV Cleared
9 106 (2.10%) AWS Certification
10 89 (1.77%) CISM
11 81 (1.61%) Cisco Certification
12 71 (1.41%) Master's Degree
13 55 (1.09%) BPSS Clearance
14 40 (0.79%) MCP
14 40 (0.79%) PMI Certification
15 36 (0.71%) CCNP
15 36 (0.71%) PMP
16 35 (0.69%) ISTQB
16 35 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
17 29 (0.58%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 327 (6.49%) GDPR
2 300 (5.95%) Data Quality
3 272 (5.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 264 (5.24%) QA
5 207 (4.11%) NIST
6 93 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 76 (1.51%) NCSC
8 74 (1.47%) PCI DSS
9 48 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
10 41 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 36 (0.71%) SLA
12 35 (0.69%) SOC 2
13 33 (0.66%) HIPAA
14 30 (0.60%) PSD2
15 28 (0.56%) EU AI Act
15 28 (0.56%) WCAG
16 27 (0.54%) PMO
17 23 (0.46%) GRC
18 22 (0.44%) ISO 20022
19 16 (0.32%) SEPA
System Software
1 684 (13.58%) Active Directory
2 644 (12.78%) Docker
3 166 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 77 (1.53%) Hyper-V
5 63 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
6 62 (1.23%) Virtual Desktop
7 52 (1.03%) vSphere
8 20 (0.40%) VMware NSX
9 14 (0.28%) Squid
10 12 (0.24%) DFS Replication
11 10 (0.20%) KVM
11 10 (0.20%) Postfix
11 10 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
12 9 (0.18%) Dovecot
13 8 (0.16%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 7 (0.14%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 7 (0.14%) NFS
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.14%) Snort
14 7 (0.14%) zsh
Systems Management
1 744 (14.77%) Kubernetes
2 743 (14.75%) Terraform
3 283 (5.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 239 (4.74%) Ansible
5 126 (2.50%) SCCM
6 124 (2.46%) Grafana
7 119 (2.36%) Single Sign-On
8 115 (2.28%) Prometheus
9 43 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.73%) Argo
11 34 (0.67%) Puppet
12 22 (0.44%) Nessus
13 21 (0.42%) Progress Chef
14 19 (0.38%) Istio
14 19 (0.38%) Kibana
15 18 (0.36%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.36%) Nmap
15 18 (0.36%) vCenter Server
16 17 (0.34%) vRealize
17 15 (0.30%) Podman
Vendors
1 1,645 (32.65%) Microsoft
2 505 (10.02%) Databricks
3 318 (6.31%) Oracle
4 279 (5.54%) Google
5 236 (4.68%) ServiceNow
6 214 (4.25%) VMware
7 151 (3.00%) Cisco
8 145 (2.88%) Splunk
9 141 (2.80%) SAP
10 123 (2.44%) OpenAI
11 105 (2.08%) Salesforce
12 103 (2.04%) CyberArk
13 85 (1.69%) Palo Alto
14 65 (1.29%) Citrix
15 61 (1.21%) Red Hat
16 60 (1.19%) Foundry
17 59 (1.17%) BeyondTrust
17 59 (1.17%) Okta
18 53 (1.05%) IBM
19 51 (1.01%) Dynatrace