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

6 months to
20 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,520 4,142 5,159
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.84% 15.96% 13.67%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.17% 42.57% 41.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,935 2,815 3,815
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £420 £425 £438
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 £719 £725 £743
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.19% -2.78% -3.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 96 26 69
10th Percentile £23.19 £21.78 £17.78
25th Percentile £51.81 £24.10 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £63.61 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £77.35 £66.85
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 13,090 9,729 12,448
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.57% 37.49% 32.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,022 6,531 9,016
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 364 147 309
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.44 £14.10
25th Percentile £19.00 £21.25 £16.14
Median hourly rate £37.50 £27.50 £21.64
Median % change year-on-year +36.36% +27.08% -13.44%
75th Percentile £60.00 £48.38 £48.75
90th Percentile £79.28 £74.45 £66.00
UK median hourly rate £37.25 £27.50 £22.00
% change year-on-year +35.45% +25.00% -12.00%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 2,989 £538 -2.27% 1,301
North of England 0 711 £482 +2.99% 801
South East -1 701 £500 -6.98% 1,097
Midlands -2 465 £500 -4.31% 437
North West 0 353 £463 -1.18% 438
West Midlands +2 352 £525 -4.55% 236
South West +5 339 £517 -3.32% 400
Yorkshire -2 310 £500 +5.26% 253
East of England -1 158 £550 +4.76% 392
East Midlands -4 111 £428 -5.00% 197
North East -1 52 £515 +10.87% 118
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
1 259 (4.69%) SharePoint
2 185 (3.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 152 (2.75%) Apache Spark
4 143 (2.59%) Confluence
5 83 (1.50%) Apache
6 70 (1.27%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.38%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.27%) Appian
8 15 (0.27%) CMS
9 14 (0.25%) SAS
10 13 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.24%) Camunda
11 11 (0.20%) IIS
12 10 (0.18%) HCL Notes
13 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 9 (0.16%) Mendix
13 9 (0.16%) nginx
13 9 (0.16%) WebLogic
14 8 (0.14%) Skype for Business
14 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
Applications
1 111 (2.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 87 (1.58%) Microsoft Office
3 45 (0.82%) MS Visio
4 43 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 37 (0.67%) 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 (0.072%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.072%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 2 (0.036%) SOLIDWORKS
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
11 1 (0.018%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 95 (1.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (1.09%) 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 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%) Salesforce CRM
7 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.091%) Oracle Assets
8 5 (0.091%) Oracle General Ledger
8 5 (0.091%) Oracle Payables
8 5 (0.091%) Oracle Receivables
8 5 (0.091%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,960 (35.51%) AWS
2 1,150 (20.83%) GCP
3 1,071 (19.40%) Azure DevOps
4 744 (13.48%) Power Platform
5 687 (12.45%) Entra ID
6 660 (11.96%) Microsoft 365
7 548 (9.93%) GitHub
8 401 (7.26%) Azure Data Factory
9 311 (5.63%) Serverless
10 304 (5.51%) GitHub Actions
11 249 (4.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 248 (4.49%) Dynamics 365
13 239 (4.33%) SaaS
14 214 (3.88%) Azure AKS
15 209 (3.79%) Power Automate
16 199 (3.61%) Azure Monitor
17 194 (3.51%) Azure Functions
18 188 (3.41%) PaaS
19 186 (3.37%) Azure Logic Apps
20 178 (3.22%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 371 (6.72%) Firewall
2 246 (4.46%) DNS
3 188 (3.41%) VPN
4 163 (2.95%) Network Security
5 152 (2.75%) DHCP
6 128 (2.32%) WAN
7 94 (1.70%) LAN
8 93 (1.68%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.38%) Wi-Fi
10 68 (1.23%) VLAN
11 65 (1.18%) Kerberos
12 60 (1.09%) SD-WAN
13 38 (0.69%) HTTP
14 35 (0.63%) BGP
15 32 (0.58%) Wireless
16 28 (0.51%) Internet
16 28 (0.51%) OSPF
17 27 (0.49%) SSL
18 26 (0.47%) MPLS
18 26 (0.47%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 517 (9.37%) Power BI
2 309 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 285 (5.16%) Data Warehouse
4 268 (4.86%) Data Lake
5 205 (3.71%) PostgreSQL
6 179 (3.24%) Azure SQL Database
7 161 (2.92%) NoSQL
8 133 (2.41%) Metadata
9 106 (1.92%) Relational Database
10 104 (1.88%) Delta Lake
11 88 (1.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 75 (1.36%) MongoDB
13 66 (1.20%) Big Data
13 66 (1.20%) Tableau
14 62 (1.12%) Oracle Database
15 55 (1.00%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.98%) MySQL
17 47 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
18 46 (0.83%) Redis
19 38 (0.69%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 413 (7.48%) Git
2 372 (6.74%) JIRA
3 264 (4.78%) Jenkins
4 204 (3.70%) GitLab
5 87 (1.58%) Selenium
6 73 (1.32%) Postman
7 53 (0.96%) JUnit
8 49 (0.89%) MLflow
8 49 (0.89%) SonarQube
9 48 (0.87%) Cucumber
10 46 (0.83%) JMeter
11 37 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
13 33 (0.60%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.53%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.49%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.47%) Bitbucket
16 26 (0.47%) Maven
16 26 (0.47%) TestRail
17 23 (0.42%) ERwin
General
1 1,710 (30.98%) Social Skills
2 1,005 (18.21%) Finance
3 585 (10.60%) Public Sector
4 568 (10.29%) Analytical Skills
5 324 (5.87%) Banking
6 186 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
7 111 (2.01%) Legal
8 98 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 86 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
9 86 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
10 82 (1.49%) Retail
11 74 (1.34%) Marketing
11 74 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
12 62 (1.12%) Investment Banking
13 60 (1.09%) Telecoms
14 54 (0.98%) Financial Institution
15 53 (0.96%) Law
16 41 (0.74%) Manufacturing
17 38 (0.69%) Front Office
18 36 (0.65%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 915 (16.58%) Architect
2 758 (13.73%) Developer
3 606 (10.98%) Senior
4 450 (8.15%) Azure Engineer
5 449 (8.13%) Data Engineer
6 399 (7.23%) Lead
7 379 (6.87%) Analyst
8 284 (5.14%) Solutions Architect
9 271 (4.91%) DevOps Engineer
10 245 (4.44%) Consultant
11 168 (3.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 151 (2.74%) Security Engineer
13 148 (2.68%) Cloud Engineer
14 136 (2.46%) Senior Developer
15 135 (2.45%) Azure Architect
16 131 (2.37%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 122 (2.21%) Platform Engineer
18 113 (2.05%) Data Architect
19 108 (1.96%) Azure Data Engineer
19 108 (1.96%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 413 (7.48%) .NET
2 376 (6.81%) REST
3 252 (4.57%) React
4 214 (3.88%) Kafka
5 208 (3.77%) PySpark
6 199 (3.61%) RESTful
7 192 (3.48%) Node.js
8 178 (3.22%) OAuth
9 166 (3.01%) Spring
10 144 (2.61%) HTML
11 143 (2.59%) LDAP
12 139 (2.52%) Spring Boot
13 137 (2.48%) AngularJS
14 131 (2.37%) PyTorch
15 127 (2.30%) CSS
16 122 (2.21%) SOAP
17 119 (2.16%) Middleware
17 119 (2.16%) SAML
17 119 (2.16%) TensorFlow
18 117 (2.12%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 486 (8.80%) Cloud Native
2 221 (4.00%) Onboarding
3 187 (3.39%) Product Ownership
4 156 (2.83%) Security Posture
5 153 (2.77%) Hybrid Cloud
6 146 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
7 141 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
8 117 (2.12%) Data Centre
9 101 (1.83%) Public Cloud
10 86 (1.56%) Distributed Systems
11 82 (1.49%) AI Agents
12 78 (1.41%) Replication
13 77 (1.39%) Data Structures
14 65 (1.18%) Management Information System
15 63 (1.14%) Algorithms
16 56 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
17 55 (1.00%) Low-Code
18 52 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
19 49 (0.89%) NHS
20 46 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 633 (11.47%) Windows
2 320 (5.80%) Linux
3 185 (3.35%) Windows Server
4 116 (2.10%) Windows 10
5 67 (1.21%) Unix
6 55 (1.00%) VMS
7 46 (0.83%) Mac OS
8 41 (0.74%) Apple iOS
9 33 (0.60%) Android
9 33 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.36%) Ubuntu
10 20 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
11 19 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.22%) CentOS
13 11 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 7 (0.13%) Solaris
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.091%) AIX
17 4 (0.072%) Amazon Linux
18 3 (0.054%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,984 (35.94%) DevOps
2 1,638 (29.67%) CI/CD
3 1,335 (24.18%) Agile
4 1,032 (18.70%) Problem-Solving
5 843 (15.27%) Analytics
6 791 (14.33%) AI
7 721 (13.06%) Infrastructure as Code
8 663 (12.01%) Migration
9 597 (10.82%) Business Intelligence
10 577 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
11 567 (10.27%) Data Modelling
12 546 (9.89%) Containerisation
13 518 (9.38%) Continuous Improvement
14 501 (9.08%) Machine Learning
15 497 (9.00%) ETL
16 492 (8.91%) Data Pipeline
17 481 (8.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 477 (8.64%) Microservices
19 461 (8.35%) Data Engineering
20 433 (7.84%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,440 (26.09%) Python
2 1,230 (22.28%) SQL
3 612 (11.09%) PowerShell
4 460 (8.33%) Java
5 456 (8.26%) C#
6 419 (7.59%) JavaScript
7 236 (4.28%) TypeScript
8 222 (4.02%) Bash
9 161 (2.92%) Bicep
10 90 (1.63%) Scala
11 76 (1.38%) Go
11 76 (1.38%) PL/SQL
12 64 (1.16%) Kusto Query Language
13 61 (1.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 59 (1.07%) T-SQL
15 40 (0.72%) R
16 31 (0.56%) C++
17 26 (0.47%) PHP
17 26 (0.47%) Shell Script
18 19 (0.34%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,340 (24.28%) Security Cleared
2 1,104 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 447 (8.10%) Degree
4 330 (5.98%) Azure Certification
5 190 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 158 (2.86%) Microsoft Certification
7 153 (2.77%) CISSP
8 121 (2.19%) AWS Certification
9 119 (2.16%) DV Cleared
10 96 (1.74%) CISM
11 88 (1.59%) Cisco Certification
12 84 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
13 73 (1.32%) Master's Degree
14 52 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
15 42 (0.76%) PMI Certification
16 41 (0.74%) CCNP
16 41 (0.74%) ISTQB
17 39 (0.71%) PMP
18 32 (0.58%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 29 (0.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 371 (6.72%) Data Quality
2 353 (6.39%) GDPR
3 290 (5.25%) QA
4 266 (4.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 209 (3.79%) NIST
6 103 (1.87%) Accessibility
7 84 (1.52%) NCSC
8 78 (1.41%) PCI DSS
9 56 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
10 53 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 47 (0.85%) SLA
12 36 (0.65%) HIPAA
13 35 (0.63%) PMO
14 34 (0.62%) SOC 2
15 29 (0.53%) WCAG
16 28 (0.51%) GRC
17 27 (0.49%) EU AI Act
18 23 (0.42%) ISO 20022
19 22 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 22 (0.40%) PSD2
System Software
1 757 (13.71%) Active Directory
2 662 (11.99%) Docker
3 174 (3.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (1.54%) Hyper-V
5 77 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
6 73 (1.32%) Virtual Desktop
7 65 (1.18%) vSphere
8 21 (0.38%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
10 9 (0.16%) Postfix
11 8 (0.14%) Firmware
11 8 (0.14%) NFS
11 8 (0.14%) Snort
11 8 (0.14%) Squid
12 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 7 (0.13%) DFS Replication
12 7 (0.13%) KVM
12 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.11%) Lustre
Systems Management
1 831 (15.05%) Terraform
2 805 (14.58%) Kubernetes
3 325 (5.89%) Microsoft Intune
4 238 (4.31%) Ansible
5 146 (2.64%) Single Sign-On
6 133 (2.41%) Grafana
7 126 (2.28%) SCCM
8 118 (2.14%) Prometheus
9 72 (1.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.71%) Argo
11 26 (0.47%) Puppet
12 20 (0.36%) Istio
12 20 (0.36%) Nessus
12 20 (0.36%) Progress Chef
13 19 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
13 19 (0.34%) Nmap
14 18 (0.33%) FortiGate
15 17 (0.31%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.31%) vRealize
16 16 (0.29%) Kibana
Vendors
1 1,798 (32.57%) Microsoft
2 567 (10.27%) Databricks
3 299 (5.42%) Oracle
4 290 (5.25%) Google
5 248 (4.49%) ServiceNow
6 229 (4.15%) VMware
7 162 (2.93%) SAP
8 151 (2.74%) OpenAI
9 141 (2.55%) Cisco
10 138 (2.50%) Splunk
11 108 (1.96%) CyberArk
12 107 (1.94%) Salesforce
13 90 (1.63%) Palo Alto
14 86 (1.56%) Foundry
15 71 (1.29%) Citrix
16 69 (1.25%) Okta
17 65 (1.18%) Red Hat
18 63 (1.14%) BeyondTrust
19 57 (1.03%) IBM
20 49 (0.89%) Fortinet